When coding with JS and the DOM I find myself constantly needing to generate ids (or names) that have no purpose other than to group DOM elements together (or relate them to each other)¹.

These ids (or names) will not be mentioned explicitly anywhere else in the code, and therefore they could be any random strings, and, for the case of ids, they must be unique.

Is there a standard way in JavaScript to automatically generate unique ids?

¹A situation that illustrates such use of identifiers arises at the time of grouping (say) radio buttons and linking them to their associated labels...

My (naive noob's) alternative to the brain-numbing task of writing HTML like this

<input type=radio name=sys id=sys-0 value=lnx> <label for=sys-0> Linux   </label> <br>

<input type=radio name=sys id=sys-1 value=osx> <label for=sys-1> OS X    </label> <br>

<input type=radio name=sys id=sys-2 value=win> <label for=sys-2> Windows </label>

(which requires repeating each sys-based identifier three times per button-label pair) is to just write

<div class=button-group name=sys>

  <input type=radio value=lnx> <label> Linux   </label> <br>

  <input type=radio value=osx> <label> OS X    </label> <br>

  <input type=radio value=win> <label> Windows </label>

</div>

and then use some JS to group the buttons under one name attribute, and link the labels to their respective buttons:

$('.button-group').each(function (i, e) {

  var name = $(e).attr('name');

  $(e).find(':radio').each(function (j, f) {

    var id = name + '-' + j;

    $(f).attr('name', name)

        .attr('id', id)

      .next()

        .attr('for', id);

  })

});

This works fine, but it still requires me to come up with names for these button groups and unique ids for the buttons, names and ids that are otherwise useless to me. I'd just as soon avoid all this gratuitous naming business with something like

<div class=button-group>

  <input type=radio value=lnx> <label> Linux   </label> <br>

  <input type=radio value=osx> <label> OS X    </label> <br>

  <input type=radio value=win> <label> Windows </label>

</div>



$('.button-group').each(function (i, e) {

  var name = unique_id();

  $(e).find(':radio').each(function (j, f) {

    var id = unique_id();

    $(f).attr('name', name)

        .attr('id', id)

      .next()

        .attr('for', id);

  })

});

Of course I could roll my own implementation of unique_id, but I thought I'd ask before I reinvent this very obvious-looking wheel.