Question

I find this selector format cumbersome if I need to use it often:

$('[name="someElementName"]').val()

I thought about extending jQuery so that I can use a format like this:

$('@someElementName').val()

I understand that jQuery is just following the convention of CSS and that I am breaking convention.

Regarding the choice of “@”, I just picked a special character that seemed unused for selectors and not likely to create a conflict. If anyone has a better suggestion I’m open to suggestions.

I don’t have the option to not use the name attribute as part of the selector.

I was thinking about using regular expression like this:

selectorString.replace(/\@([\d\w\s\-]*)/g, '[name="$1"]')

From here I am stuck as how to extend jQuery to utilize that regex in such a way that I can use code like “$(‘@someElementName’).val();

Answer 1

How about this:

(function($) {
    $.named = function(name, context) {
        context = context || document;
        return $(context.getElementsByName(name));
    }
})(jQuery);

usage:

$.named('foo').val();

See http://jsfiddle.net/alnitak/n6nEW/