A simple question: why should we add the id into our HTML tags if they work perfectly well without them? I know that one of their uses is being able to navigate though the page via hashtags (#), but is there any other use for them?
Uses of id attributes in HTML
As a target for a fragment identifier on a URL.
As a target on form controls for the for attribute on <label> and <output> elements.
As a target on <form> elements for the form attribute on form associated elements.
As a target for element references via the microdata itemref attribute.
As a target for element references via some ARIA attributes including aria-describedby, aria-labelledby and 4 others.
As a target on <th> elements for the headers attribute on <td> and <th> elements.
As a target on <menu> elements for the contextmenu attribute.
As a target on <datalist> elements for the list attribute on <input> elements.
As part of a hash-name reference to <map> elements for the usemap attribute on the <img> and <object> elements.
As an identifier of an element in a CSS selector
As an identifier of an element for JavaScript processing
They're most often used to uniquely identify elements for styling (CSS) and scripting (JavaScript et al) purposes.
But if you're asking about HTML and only HTML, then one example where declarative IDs are useful is associating a <label> with its <input>, <button> or <textarea> control via its for attribute:
<label for="ex">Example field:</label>
<input type="text" name="ex" id="ex">
Without assigning this attribute, activating the label does nothing, but when you pair both elements together using for and id, activating the label causes its control to gain focus.
The other way to associate a form label with its control is to contain it within the label:
<label>
Example field:
<input type="text" name="ex">
</label>
But this doesn't always suit the structure of a form or a page, so an ID reference is offered as an alternative.
Other circumstances where an id attribute serves a function are covered extensively in Alohci's answer.
You can use IDs to acces your divs from javascript, CSS and jquery. If you don't use IDs it will be very difficult for you to interact with your HTML page from JS.
AFAIK, they are used to uniquely refer to a tag.And makes it easier for you to refer to the tag.
IDs are used for accessing your elements in CSS and JavaScript. Strictly speaking IDs should uniquely identify an element. You can also use class attributes to identify groups of elements.
The id attribute provides a unique identifier for an element within the document. It may be used by an a element to create a hyperlink to this particular element.
This identifier may also be used in CSS code as a hook that can be used for styling purposes, or by JavaScript code (via the Document Object Model, or DOM) to make changes or add behavior to the element by referencing its unique id.
see http://reference.sitepoint.com/html/core-attributes/id
for more info on class see here: http://reference.sitepoint.com/html/core-attributes/class
it is there to help you identify your element in java-script code.the getElementByID function in java-script give the handle of an element with specific ID for you.like this.
var someElement = document.getelementById("someID");
// do whatever with someElement;
I myself also prefer class for styling through CSS but sometimes you need an element to be unique. For accessibility reasons you use id to input elements to "connect" its label to it by using for attribute. And for Javascript it's much simpler to select an element if it has got id attribute.
The main reason I use ids for my HTML elements is the fact that their selection is faster, in Javascript with getElementById and in CSS as well, using the #id class.
Of course, I'm not saying this is always a good idea, especially in CSS, where having classes based on ids can cause a lot of redundancy, it's just one of the reasons
First, only add ID when you will need to use them. In most cases id is used to do other things like:
A reference for scripts,Selecting elements to apply scripts to,
A style sheet selector, selecting elements for styling
Named anchors for linking to, which is what u called page navigation
So simply because in most cases you will want to do something to or with your content in any tag, its good to put an identifier, that is the id attribute.
Are there any advantages to using <div id="here" ... instead of <div name="here" ...?
Are they both referenced to as #here?
Here are some differences between both:
name has never been a div element attribute.
name as used on the form controls (input, textarea, select, and button elements) is radically different from the id attribute on named elements. In this case, the name attribute relates to how data is labeled when sent to server, and multiple elements may share the same name.
The id attribute on the other hand is for identifying one unique element for the purposes of scripting, styling, or addressing.
The use of the name attribute on other elements than form controls was in HTML 4.01 the same as that of id, but it allowed for a wider set of characters than the id attribute and wasn't controlled in quite the same way. Because of this ambiguity the W3C decided to deprecate/remove the name attribute on those elements in favor for the unambigous id attribute in XHTML.
This is also connected to another detail of XML however - only one attribute of any element may be of the type ID, which would not be the case if they let name stay on the element, but corrected the ambiguity problems.
As the name attribute didn't work the same on those two sets of elements, it was best to remove one of them.
In short, for backwards compatibility, you should use the name and id attribute both, both set to the same value, for all elements except form controls if you use HTML 4.01 or XHTML 1.0 Transitional. If you use XHTML 1.0 Strict or later you should use only id. For form controls, you should use name for what you want the form to send to the server and for DOM 0 access, and only use id for styling, DOM1-3 access or addressing reasons
It depends on where you are going to use them.
Usually, id of an element is unique while multiple elements can share the same name.
Id is referenced as #here, and name is referenced as [name=here].
They are not interchangeable, even if they sometimes appear to be.
Name should only exist on form input fields. It is what that tag will cause the browser to pass in the submission as the name of the field. As Tomalak noted in a comment, DIV actually does not have a Name attribute.
ID is the unique identifier for the DOM, to manipulate or refer to the tag; for example, in JavaScript.
The "id" attribute assigns an identifier to the associated element. This identifier must be unique in the document and can be used to refer to that element.
Check div element.
You are probably thinking about the input tag. It offers the name attribute to identify which input is what when the form is submitted.
id would be only used to style the input, whereas name would not.
One thing of importance that hasn't been mentioned in the other answers is that a form with a name attribute gets added as a variable to the document object in JavaScript. Any form controls with a name inside that form are accessible as child objects on the form element.
So if, for example, you had some HTML like the following:
<form name="myForm">
<input name="myInput" type="text" />
</form>
You could access the form with document.myForm or access the input element with document.myForm.myInput.
See an example of this idea in action on JSFiddle.
The answer is:
the id attribute is to be unique across the entirety of the HTML document, and
the name attribute has no such requirement.
By convention, the name value is used with forms to help with the processing of forms, particularly with radio buttons. How you use the name attribute depends on your use case. If you need some other tag for your use case, you can of course create a new attribute and use that as you will; pick a name for your attribute that will likely be very unique!
I have a form within another form:
<form id="a">
<form id="b">
<input type="submit">
When the submit button is clicked, it seems that the outer form is submitted.
Is there a way to target which form is submitted?
No, nested forms aren't supported:
There can be several forms in a single document, but the FORM element can't be nested.
-- http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html3/forms.html
The HTML DTD specifically forbids a form element from containing another form element:
<!ELEMENT FORM - - (%block;|SCRIPT)+ -(FORM) -- interactive form -->
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/interact/forms.html#edef-FORM
Like others have said...nested forms aren't allowed.
However, that doesn't mean some browsers won't do something with such. In the example that you have presented, the browser appears to be ignoring the second <form> tag in a similar fashion to how an unknown tag (i.e. <notAValidTag>) is also ignored. Since JavaScript also doesn't allow for embedded form collections, the best way to ensure that FormB's information is submitted is to make it no longer a nested form. This will break up your markup and UI into more distinct sections which may be beneficial from a UX perspective as well.
i think this is not allowed by the html standard.
In HTML 5, yes. Each input element can have a "form" attribute signalling which form it belongs to. However, it is still invalid to nest forms in HTML and HTML parsers won't allow this to happen.
However, it is possible to construct nested forms via JavaScript. In the absence of the form attribute, the rules for determining which form an input belongs to are quite complex, but they are described in full with an example at http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/association-of-controls-and-forms.html#association-of-controls-and-forms
Specifically, step 5 of Reset the Form Owner says:
Otherwise, if element has an ancestor form element, then associate element with the nearest such ancestor form element.
Clearly, "nearest" would not need to be said if form nesting was impossible.
Then step 4 explains how the required form can be targeted, by associating the submit button to the required form though the "form" attribute on the button.
If element is listed, has a form content attribute, and is connected, then:
If the first element in element's tree, in tree order, to have an ID that is identical to element's form content attribute's value, is a form element, then associate the element with that form element.
What is the difference between the id and name attributes? They both seem to serve the same purpose of providing an identifier.
I would like to know (specifically with regards to HTML forms) whether or not using both is necessary or encouraged for any reasons.
The name attribute is used when sending data in a form submission. Different controls respond differently. For example, you may have several radio buttons with different id attributes, but the same name. When submitted, there is just the one value in the response - the radio button you selected.
Of course, there's more to it than that, but it will definitely get you thinking in the right direction.
Use name attributes for form controls (such as <input> and <select>), as that's the identifier used in the POST or GET call that happens on form submission.
Use id attributes whenever you need to address a particular HTML element with CSS, JavaScript or a fragment identifier. It's possible to look up elements by name, too, but it's simpler and more reliable to look them up by ID.
Here is a brief summary:
id is used to identify the HTML element through the Document
Object Model (via JavaScript or styled with CSS). id is expected
to be unique within the page.
name corresponds to the form element and identifies what is posted
back to the server.
The way I think about it and use it is simple:
id is used for CSS and JavaScript/jQuery (it has to be unique on a page).
name is used for form handling on the server when a form is submitted via HTML (it has to be unique in a form - to some extent, see Paul's comment below).
See id= vs name=:
What’s the difference? The short answer is, use both and don’t worry about it. But if you want to understand this goofiness, here’s the skinny:
id= is for use as a target like this: <some-element id="XXX"></some-element> for links like this: <a href="#XXX".
name= is also used to label the fields in the message send to a server with an HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) GET or POST when you hit submit in a form.
id= labels the fields for use by JavaScript and Java DOM (Document Object Model).
The names in name= must be unique within a form. The names in id= must be unique within the entire document.
Sometimes the name= and id= names will differ, because the server is expecting the same name from various forms in the same document or various radio buttons in the same form as in the example above. The id= must be unique; the name= must not be.
JavaScript needed unique names, but there were too many documents already out here without unique name= names, so the W3 people invented the id tag that was required to be unique. Unfortunately older browsers did not understand it. So you need both naming schemes in your forms.
Note: attribute "name" for some tags like <a> is not supported in HTML5.
The ID tag - used by CSS, define a unique instance of a div, span or other elements. Appears within the JavaScript DOM model, allowing you to access them with various function calls.
The Name tag for fields - this is unique per form -- unless you are doing an array which you want to pass to PHP/server-side processing. You can access it via JavaScript by name, but I think that it does not appear as a node in the DOM or some restrictions may apply (you cannot use .innerHTML, for example, if I recall correctly).
Generally, it is assumed that name is always superseded by id. This is true, to some extent, but not for form fields and frame names, practically speaking. For example, with form elements, the name attribute is used to determine the name-value pairs to be sent to a server-side program and should not be eliminated. Browsers do not use id in that manner. To be on the safe side, you could use the name and id attributes on form elements. So, we would write the following:
<form id="myForm" name="myForm">
<input type="text" id="userName" name="userName" />
</form>
To ensure compatibility, having matching name and id attribute values when both are defined is a good idea. However, be careful—some tags, particularly radio buttons, must have nonunique name values, but require unique id values.
Once again, this should reference that id is not simply a replacement for name; they are different in purpose. Furthermore, do not discount the old-style approach, a deep look at modern libraries shows such syntax style used for performance and ease purposes at times. Your goal should always be in favor of compatibility.
Now in most elements, the name attribute has been deprecated in favor of the more ubiquitous id attribute. However, in some cases, particularly form fields (<button>, <input>, <select>, and <textarea>), the name attribute lives on, because it continues to be required to set the name-value pair for form submission. Also, we find that some elements, notably frames and links, may continue to use the name attribute, because it is often useful for retrieving these elements by name.
There is a clear distinction between id and name. Very often when name continues on, we can set the values the same. However, id must be unique, and name in some cases shouldn’t—think radio buttons. Sadly, the uniqueness of id values, while caught by markup validation, is not as consistent as it should be. CSS implementation in browsers will style objects that share an id value; thus, we may not catch markup or style errors that could affect our JavaScript until runtime.
This is taken from the book JavaScript - The Complete Reference by Thomas-Powell.
<form action="demo_form.asp">
<label for="male">Male</label>
<input type="radio" name="sex" id="male" value="male"><br>
<label for="female">Female</label>
<input type="radio" name="sex" id="female" value="female"><br>
<input type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>
The forum thread below has answers to the same basic question, but basically, id is used for scripting identification and name is for server-side.
id vs. name attribute for HTML controls
name is deprecated for link targets, and invalid in HTML5. It no longer works at least in the latest Firefox (v13). Change <a name="hello"> to <a id="hello">.
The target does not need to be an <a> tag. It can be <p id="hello"> or <h2 id="hello">, etc. which is often cleaner code.
As other posts say clearly, name is still used (needed) in forms. It is also still used in META tags.
name vs. id
name
Name of the element. For example used by the server to identify the
fields in form submits.
Supporting elements are <button>, <form>, <fieldset>, <iframe>,
<input>, <keygen>, <object>, <output>, <select>, <textarea>, <map>,
<meta>, and <param>
Name does not have to be unique.
id
Often used with CSS to style a specific element. The value of this
attribute must be unique.
Id is a global attribute. Global attributes can be used on all elements, though the attributes may have no effect on some elements.
Must be unique in the whole document.
This attribute's value must not contain white spaces, in contrast to
the class attribute, which allows space-separated values.
Using characters except ASCII letters and digits, '_', '-' and '.'
may cause compatibility problems, as they weren't allowed in HTML 4.
Though this restriction has been lifted in HTML 5, an ID should start
with a letter for compatibility.
<body>
<form action="">
<label for="username">Username</label>
<input type="text" id="username" name="username">
<button>Submit!</button>
</form>
</body>
As we can see here, "id" and "for" elements are interconnected. If you click on the label (Username) then the input field will be highlighted (this is useful for mobile users and is considered as a good practice).
On the other hand, the "name" element is useful while submitting the form. Whatever you enter in the input field it will be displayed on the URL. Please see the attached image.
The ID of a form input element has nothing to do with the data contained within the element. IDs are for hooking the element with JavaScript and CSS. The name attribute, however, is used in the HTTP request sent by your browser to the server as a variable name associated with the data contained in the value attribute.
For instance:
<form>
<input type="text" name="user" value="bob">
<input type="password" name="password" value="abcd1234">
</form>
When the form is submitted, the form data will be included in the HTTP header like this:
If you add an ID attribute, it will not change anything in the HTTP header. It will just make it easier to hook it with CSS and JavaScript.
ID is used to uniquely identify an element.
Name is used in forms. Although you submit a form, if you don’t give any name, nothing will will be submitted. Hence form elements need a name to get identified by form methods like "get or push".
And only the ones with the name attribute will go out.
If you're not using the form's own submit method to send information to a server (and are instead doing it using JavaScript) you can use the name attribute to attach extra information to an input - rather like pairing it with a hidden input value, but it looks neater because it's incorporated into the input.
This bit does still currently work in Firefox although I suppose in the future it might not get allowed through.
You can have multiple input fields with the same name value, as long as you aren't planning to submit the old fashioned way.
Id:
It is used to identify the HTML element through the Document Object Model (DOM) (via JavaScript or styled with CSS).
Id is expected to be unique within the page.
Name corresponds to the form element and identifies what is posted back to the server.
Example:
<form action="action_page.php" id="Myform">
First name: <input type="text" name="FirstName"><br>
<input type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>
<p>The "Last name" field below is outside the form element, but still part of the form.</p>
Last name: <input type="text" name="LastName" form="Myform">
In all the time this question has been around, I am chagrined (and perhaps a bit saddened) that nobody has thought to mention accessibility which, though always important, has been steadily gaining support amongst both management and software engineers (just from my personal observations; no hard data to back that up).
One statistic I can provide is this (source):
So awareness of accessibility shortcomings show a steadily growing trend. The same reference mentions that, from those numbers, one can observe that at least one lawsuit is filed every hour!
So how does accessibility weigh in on name vs id?
According to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C):
The for attribute of the label must exactly match the id of the
form control.
Based on personal experiences and according to the W3Schools description for attributes:
ID is a global attribute and applies to virtually all elements in HTML. It is used to uniquely identify elements on the Web page, and its value is mostly accessed from the frontend (typically through JavaScript or jQuery).
name is an attribute that is useful to specific elements (such as form elements, etc.) in HTML. Its value is mostly sent to the backend for processing.
HTML Attribute Reference
Below is an interesting use of the id attribute. It is used within the <form> tag and used to identify the form for <input> elements outside of the </form> boundaries so that they will be included with the other <input> fields within the form.
<form action="action_page.php" id="form1">
First name: <input type="text" name="fname"><br>
<input type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>
<p>The "Last name" field below is outside the form element, but still part of the form.</p>
Last name: <input type="text" name="lname" form="form1">
There is no literal difference between an id and name.
name is an identifier and is used in the HTTP request sent by the browser to serve as a variable name associated with data contained in the value attribute of the element.
The id on the other hand is a unique identifier for browser, client side and JavaScript. Hence the form needs an id while its elements need a name.
id is more specifically used in adding attributes to unique elements. In DOM methods, Id is used in JavaScript for referencing the specific element you want your action to take place on.
For example:
<html>
<body>
<h1 id="demo"></h1>
<script>
document.getElementById("demo").innerHTML = "Hello World!";
</script>
</body>
</html>
Same can be achieved by name attribute, but it's preferred to use id in a form and name for small form elements like the input tag or select tag.
Both name and id is targetable by # so not sure why ID was mentioned for this task exclusively.
I often Inspect those attributes to create specific links to bookmark (where clicking on header with mouse cursor to do the same is not provided for some reason) such as the Option File Inclusions
section of MySQL 5.6 4.2.2.2 Using Option Files documentation:
https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/option-files.html#option-file-inclusions
where it's defined as <a name="option-file-inclusions"></a> (with absolutely no forms involved).
I think, the name attribute is also older than id in HTML.
The id will give an element an id, so once you write real code, (like JavaScript) you can use the id to read elements. The name is just a name, so the user can see the name of the element, I guess.
Example:
<h1 id="heading">text</h1>
<script>
document.getElementById("heading"); // Reads the element that has the id "heading".
</script>
// You can also use something like this:
document.getElementById("heading").value; // Reads the value of the selected element.