Question

I have a modal box in jQuery which I have created to display some embed code. I want the script to take the id of the link that is clicked but I can’t seem to get this working.

Does anyone know how I can do that or why this may be happening?

My jQuery code is:

function generateCode() {
    var answerid = $('.openembed').attr('id');
    if($('#embed input[name="comments"]:checked').length > 0 == true) {
        var comments = "&comments=1";
    } else {
        var comments = "";
    }
    $("#embedcode").html('<code>&lt;iframe src="embed.php?answerid=' + answerid + comments + '" width="550" height="' + $('#embed input[name="size"]').val() + '" frameborder="0"&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;</code>');
}

$(document).ready(function () {
    $('.openembed').click(function () {
        generateCode();
        var answerid = $('.openembed').attr('id');
        $('#box').show();
        return false;
    });
    $('#embed').click(function (e) {
        e.stopPropagation()
    });
    $(document).click(function () {
        $('#box').hide()
    });
});

My mark-up is:

<a href="#" id="7830" class="openembed">Embed</a>
<a href="#" id="9999" class="openembed">Embed</a>

Answer 1

Your problem is here:

$('.openembed')

returns an array of matched elements. Your should instead select only the clicked element.
$('.openembed') works correctly if you assing a click event to all elements that have this class. But on the other hand, you’re unable do know which is clicked.

But fortunately in the body of handler function click you could call $(this).

$(this) will return the current (and clicked element).

// var answerid = $('.openembed').attr('id'); // Wrong
var answerid = $(this).attr('id');   // Correct
// Now you can call generateCode
generateCode(answerid);

Another error is the body of generateCode function. Here you should pass the id of selected element. This is the correct implementation.

function generateCode(answerid) {
    if($('#embed input[name="comments"]:checked').length > 0 == true) {
        var comments = "&comments=1";
    } else {
         var comments = "";
    }
    $("#embedcode").html('<iframe src="embed.php?answerid=' + answerid + comments + '" width="550" height="' + $('#embed input[name="size"]').val() + '"frameborder="0"></iframe>');
}

Here I have implemented your code with the correct behavior: http://jsfiddle.net/pSZZF/2/