Question

Goal: Get a specific HTML element ul’s id value from a ul class called SBUpdater

Purpose: My program contains several server url’s and parses specific information that I need from each server url. Each id of a ul contains the value of a server url. I need to take this ID value so i can update that specific ul tag and update the content on the screen (without refreshing the page).

In a php file I have the following:
Example Code:

<ul id="http://server1.com" class="SBUPdater">
   <li> ... </li>
</ul> 

<ul id="http://server2.com" class="SBUPdater">
   <li> ... </li>
</ul>

All I need is a method of getting this id value from the ul tags.
Known:

• Tag = ul
• Class = SBUpdater
• ID = ?

What I would like is to retrieve every ul’s id value, take all ul id’s, perform a function with them, and then repeat the process every 10 seconds.

Answer 1

With prototype library you would do this:

$$('.SBUPdater').each(function(){
    new Ajax.PeriodicalUpdater(this, this.getAttribute('data-url'), {
        frequency: 10 // every 10 seconds
    });
});

Each ul element would use the data-url (not id) attribute to hold the URL of your server script. That script would then return the new content of the appropriate ul element.

_{Thanks to Nick Craver for excellent suggestion}