Question

I have a select field with id appointment_stylist_id. For some reason, the first one of these returns my element but the second one returns undefined:

  console.log(dojo.byId('appointment_stylist_id'));
  console.log(dijit.byId('appointment_stylist_id'));

Any idea why?

Answer 1

This is because dojo.byId does what you want (find a DOM element with a particular ID), and dijit.byId doesn’t do that.

dijit.byId is a function for looking up a specific widget by its assigned name (id). This function is similar to dojo.byId but whereas dojo.byId returns DOMNodes, dijit.byId returns a JavaScript object that is the instance of the widget.

…

dijit.byId and dojo.byId are often confused, particularly by first time users. This function should be used when you wish to obtain a direct handle the the JavaScript object instance of your widget and access functions of that widget.

http://dojotoolkit.org/reference-guide/dijit/byId.html

See also

What the difference between dojo.byId and dijit.byId?