Method chaining in jQuery

Method chaining is a feature of jQuery that allows several methods to be executed on a jQuery selection in sequence in a single code statement. For example, the following snippets of code are equivalent:

 Without chaining:

$( "button#play-movie" ).on( "click", playMovie );
$( "button#play-movie" ).css( "background-color", "orange" );
$( "button#play-movie" ).show();

With chaining:

$( "button#play-movie" ).on( "click", playMovie ) .css( "background-color", "orange" ) .show();

Notice that with chaining, the button only needs 

to be selected one time, whereas without chaining, 

jQuery must search the whole DOM and find the button 

before each method is applied. Thus, in addition to 

yielding more concise code, method chaining in jQuery

 offers a potentially powerful performance advantage.

Note: To be entirely precise, it should be noted 

that method chaining in jQuery is not the only way

 to avoid repetitively searching the entire DOM.