finding the type of an element using jQuery

Question

In jQuery, if I have a reference to an element, how can I determine what kind of element it is, for example, an input or an dropdown? Is there any way to find out?

Answer 1

It is worth noting that @Marius's second answer could be used as pure Javascript solution.

document.getElementById('elementId').tagName

Answer 2

The following will return true if the element is an input:

$("#elementId").is("input") 

or you can use the following to get the name of the tag:

$("#elementId").get(0).tagName

Answer 3

You can use .prop() with tagName as the name of the property that you want to get:

$("#elementId").prop('tagName');