CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpjavascriptjqueryhtmlajax
buck54321
buck54321

Reputation: 847

Should I refrain from encoding information in the id attribute

Lately I have gotten into the habit of encoding certain information in my ids. For instance, querying the database

select article_id, title from articles order by ...

and then using PHP to encode the information in the id of an element

foreach($article as $id=>$title){
    echo '<span class="title" id="a_'.$id.'">'.$title.'</span><br />';
}

I do this so that I can use javascript/jQuery to grab the id for an ajax call, say to fetch a preview or something

$("span.title").click(function(){
    var idArr = $(this).attr('id').split('_');
    data = {};
    data.id = idArr[1];
    $.ajax({
        ...
    });
});

I have never seen this method advocated, so I am beginning to wonder if I am setting myself up for some kind of catastrophe.

Upvotes: 5

Views: 236

Answers (1)

Toby
Toby

Reputation: 131

If you're using HTML5 you can use the data attribute.

e.g.

<span class="title" data-id="' . $id . '">'.$title.'</span>

Then you can access it via jQuery like this:

$("span.title").click(function(){
    var id = $(this).data('id');
    $.ajax({
        ...
    });
});

Upvotes: 2

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