Question

I have javascript variable obj which represents an element in the DOM and I wish to change its ID. I have attempted to do this by the following, which also illustrates that it does not work!

obj.id = "newID";

alert(obj.id); // this gives me newID as required

var element = document.getElementById("newID");

if (element != null) { alert("Hooray"); // this alert never gets displayed! }

What is wrong with my code above that means that the id seems to be changed but not picked up in the DOM? Many thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The code you show does work; the problem is probably in the code which looks up and assigns obj. My guess is that this is just a javascript object, not a part of the DOM tree.