In jQuery, how can I select different elements by the name attribute?

Question

I am trying to loop through some elements in a form (radios, text boxes, and select boxes) and get the value from each element. I am looping through by the name of each element (I don't think I can use ID because a group of radio buttons all have different IDs, but all have the same name).

Here are 2 selectors that encompass all the elements I need:

$("input[name=" + prop + "]")
$("select[name=" + prop + "]")

where prop is the loop iterator.

I want perform the same operation on both selectors, so I tried to combine them:

$("input[name=" + prop + "]", "select[name=" + prop + "]")

But that didn't work.

Is there a way to combine a search for both input elements and select elements in one selector?

Thanks!

Gumbo · Accepted Answer · 2009-11-18 19:08:20Z

10

You have just one little mistake: You declared the two selectors as two different parameters instead of one parameter with the comma as part of the selector:

$("input[name=" + prop + "], select[name=" + prop + "]")

The way you wrote it uses the elements of the second selector parameter as the context the first selector parameter is resolved from.

answered Nov 18, 2009 at 19:08

Gumbo

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2 Comments

BrianH Over a year ago

Wow - I totally see what I did wrong. I had copied and pasted the 2 selectors to make 1 selector, and I totally messed up on my quotes placement. Thanks for catching that!

bobince Over a year ago

You may also want to add textarea, and conceivably button.

Jacob Mattison · Accepted Answer · 2009-11-18 19:13:03Z

5

If the comma is included in the selector string it will work. You could also do

$("input, select").filter("[name=" + prop + "]")

which eliminates writing "[name=" + prop + "]" twice.

answered Nov 18, 2009 at 19:13

Jacob Mattison

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Comments

bobince · Accepted Answer · 2009-11-18 19:16:31Z

4

Don't try to shoehorn everything you do into jQuery. The DOM Level 1 HTML standard gives you HTMLFormElement.elements, which is easy, fast and doesn't fail for unusual characters in name like a selector string would.

<form id="x" ...>
    <input type="text" name="foo" />
    <select name="foo"></select>
</form>

<script type="text/javascript">
    var prop= 'foo';
    var form= $('#x')[0];
    var foos= form.elements[prop];
    alert(foos.length+' '+foos[0].type+' '+foos[1].type);  // 2 text select-one
</script>

answered Nov 18, 2009 at 19:16

bobince

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2 Comments

BrianH Over a year ago

That's a good tip - I fall into that trap a lot, actually. It's good to take a step back and remember the language that jQuery is written in.

keithjgrant Over a year ago

As a bonus, this will catch other form fields that aren't inputs or selects (like a textarea), in case the form is changed somewhere down the road.

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