Question

I have a block of form elements which I would like to clone and increment their ID’s using jQuery clone method. I have tried a number of examples but a lot of them only clone a single field.

My block is structured as such:

<div id="clonedInput1" class="clonedInput">
  <div>
    <div>
      <label for="txtCategory" class="">Learning category <span class="requiredField">*</span></label>
      <select class="" name="txtCategory[]" id="category1">
        <option value="">Please select</option>
      </select>
    </div>
   <div>
     <label for="txtSubCategory" class="">Sub-category <span class="requiredField">*</span></label>
     <select class="" name="txtSubCategory[]" id="subcategory1">
       <option value="">Please select category</option>
     </select>
   </div>
   <div>
     <label for="txtSubSubCategory">Sub-sub-category <span class="requiredField">*</span></label>
     <select name="txtSubSubCategory[]" id="subsubcategory1">
       <option value="">Please select sub-category</option>
     </select>
   </div>
</div>

Obviously elements are lined up a lot better but you get the idea.

I would like to keep the id structure i.e. category1, subcategory1 etc as I use these to dynamically display select options based on the parent selection so if its possible to have each cloned block like category1/category2/category3 etc that would be great.

Answer 1

HTML

<div id="clonedInput1" class="clonedInput">
    <div>
        <label for="txtCategory" class="">Learning category <span class="requiredField">*</span></label>
        <select class="" name="txtCategory[]" id="category1">
            <option value="">Please select</option>
        </select>
    </div>
    <div>
        <label for="txtSubCategory" class="">Sub-category <span class="requiredField">*</span></label>
        <select class="" name="txtSubCategory[]" id="subcategory1">
            <option value="">Please select category</option>
        </select>
    </div>
    <div>
        <label for="txtSubSubCategory">Sub-sub-category <span class="requiredField">*</span></label>
        <select name="txtSubSubCategory[]" id="subsubcategory1">
            <option value="">Please select sub-category</option>
        </select>
    </div>
    <div class="actions">
        <button class="clone">Clone</button> 
        <button class="remove">Remove</button>
    </div>
</div>

JavaScript – Jquery v1.7 and earlier

var regex = /^(.+?)(\d+)$/i;
var cloneIndex = $(".clonedInput").length;

$("button.clone").live("click", function(){
    $(this).parents(".clonedInput").clone()
        .appendTo("body")
        .attr("id", "clonedInput" +  cloneIndex)
        .find("*").each(function() {
            var id = this.id || "";
            var match = id.match(regex) || [];
            if (match.length == 3) {
                this.id = match[1] + (cloneIndex);
            }
    });
    cloneIndex++;
});

There is only one silly part 🙂 .attr("id", "clonedInput" + $(".clonedInput").length) but it works 😉

JAvascript – JQuery recent (supporting .on())

var regex = /^(.+?)(\d+)$/i;
var cloneIndex = $(".clonedInput").length;

function clone(){
    $(this).parents(".clonedInput").clone()
        .appendTo("body")
        .attr("id", "clonedInput" +  cloneIndex)
        .find("*")
        .each(function() {
            var id = this.id || "";
            var match = id.match(regex) || [];
            if (match.length == 3) {
                this.id = match[1] + (cloneIndex);
            }
        })
        .on('click', 'button.clone', clone)
        .on('click', 'button.remove', remove);
    cloneIndex++;
}
function remove(){
    $(this).parents(".clonedInput").remove();
}
$("button.clone").on("click", clone);

$("button.remove").on("click", remove);

working example here