CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phphtmlw3c-validation
drskullster
drskullster

Reputation: 831

Is PHP uniqid safe for HTML id attribute?

I'd like to use a random id attribute in HTML:

<?php $id = uniqid(); ?>
<div data-cycle-prev="#<?php echo $id; ?>_slideshow_prev">
    <div id="<?php echo $id; ?>_slideshow_prev"></div>
</div>

I'm using PHP method uniqid to generate it, but I don't know if it is safe and W3C compliant?

My concern for compliance is for the generated HTML which the PHP outputs. Not all characters are allowed in an HTML attribute, so I was wondering if uniqid() generates only allowed characters.

Upvotes: 4

Views: 1858

Answers (2)

Christian Gollhardt
Christian Gollhardt

Reputation: 17024

Yes it is save, as long you do not generate the id twice times, which is very unlikly.

I would do it another way. Maybe you want to introduce this in to your library

function getNextInt() {
    static $i = 0;
    $i++;
    return $i;
}

And in Your Template:

<?php $id = getNextInt(); ?>
<div data-cycle-prev="#<?php echo $id; ?>_slideshow_prev">
    <div id="<?php echo $id; ?>_slideshow_prev"></div>
</div>

If you are using older Versions of HTML, we need to have a letter first as id (statet from @mb21 in the comments):

<?php $id = 'mycontrol' . getNextInt(); ?>

Upvotes: 2

maximkou
maximkou

Reputation: 5332

uniqid returns id, which contains hexadecimal symbols(0-9, a-f). This is explained in manual comments - http://php.net/manual/en/function.uniqid.php#95001

So, yes, this is safe for html attributes.

Upvotes: 3

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