Question

171

Unique identifier for HTML elements

rated 0 times [ 175] [ 4] / answers: 1 / hits: 38686 / 14 Years ago, wed, july 21, 2010, 12:00:00

Besides the ID, if you say you want a unique identifier for an HTML element (let’s say a div).

I browsed the DOM for something (like a number or string) that was unique for each element; but the DOM was big and I failed to find that on the Internet.

Is there a property (in the DOM obviously) that is unique only to that element? (Other than the ID and also you don't specify it, but it comes when the DOM is constructed.)

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emileef

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3 Years ago

answered 14 Years ago keric · Accepted Answer

Depending on the objective, here are two suggestions.

Unless you actually need to express the id as some kind of string, you can save the normal DOM reference.

If you do need to express it as a string for some reason, then you'll need to assign a unique id yourself.

var getId = (function () {

  var incrementingId = 0;

  return function(element) {

    if (!element.id) {

      element.id = "id_" + incrementingId++;

      // Possibly add a check if this ID really is unique

    }

    return element.id;

  };

}());