Mini jquery plugin to update a stored jQuery object based on the original selector string. It will effectively replace all previous dom nodes with the ones matched when the update function is called;

jquery update plugin

(function ( $ ) {
  $.fn.update = function(){
    var newElements = $(this.selector),i;    
    for(i=0;i<newElements.length;i++){
      this[i] = newElements[i];
    }
    for(;i<this.length;i++){
      this[i] = undefined;
    }
    this.length = newElements.length;
    return this;
  };
})(jQuery);
 
// usage
var $foo = $("div.bar"); // selects current elements
(... many dom modifications ..)
$foo.update(); // updates with all new "div.bar" elements present in the dom, and removes those no longer present.

I've migrated this to a normal git repository: https://github.com/fmsf/jQuery-obj-update