Question

<div id="test"></div>
<script>
  $(document).ready(function() {
    alert($('#test').id);
  });  
</script>

Why doesn’t the above work, and how should I do this?

Answer 1

The jQuery way:

$('#test').attr('id')

In your example:

$(document).ready(function() {
  console.log($('#test').attr('id'));
});

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.3.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<div id="test"></div>

Or through the DOM:

$('#test').get(0).id;

or even :

$('#test')[0].id;

and reason behind usage of $('#test').get(0) in JQuery or even $('#test')[0] is that $('#test') is a JQuery selector and returns an array() of results not a single element by its default functionality

an alternative for DOM selector in jquery is

$('#test').prop('id')

which is different from .attr() and $('#test').prop('foo') grabs the specified DOM foo property, while $('#test').attr('foo') grabs the specified HTML foo attribute and you can find more details about differences here.