Question

I want to get the value of a specific sibling element using id, I build the form at run time and there are many element have the same id but in different divisions. I tried to use
$(this).siblings(“#BillNo”).val();
$(this).prev(“#BillNo”).val();
but both return undefined value

this the code at run time : commission

<div id="bill1" class="bill hide withPadding">
    <h3>Bill 1</h3>
    <span>
    <label>Bill no</label>
    <input type="text" name="billNo" class="textField" id="BillNo"/>
    </span>
    <span>
    <label>Bill total</label>
    <input type="text" name="billTotal" class="textField" id="BillTotal"/>
    </span>
    <span>
    <input type="button" name="addBillDetails" value="Add bill items" id="addBillDetails"/>
    </span>
</div>  

<div id="bill2" class="bill hide withPadding">
    <h3>Bill 2</h3>
    <span>
    <label>Bill no</label>
    <input type="text" name="billNo" class="textField" id="BillNo"/>
    </span>
    <span>
    <label>Bill total</label>
    <input type="text" name="billTotal" class="textField" id="BillTotal"/>
    </span>
    <span>
    <input type="button" name="addBillDetails" value="Add bill items" id="addBillDetails"/>
    </span>
</div>  

<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function() {
   $("input#addBillDetails").live('click',function(){
        alert($(this).siblings("#BillNo").val());
        alert($(this).prev("#BillNo").val());

        });
}
</script>

Answer 1

$('#BillNo', $(this).closest("div.bill")).val()

That limits the searches for #BillNo the parent div. Here’s a demo.

---

As an aside, you should reconsider your HTML. id should ideally be unique values. From the HTML4 specs:

id = name [CS]

This attribute assigns a name to an element. This name must be unique in a document.

And from the HTML5 specs:

The id attribute specifies its element’s unique identifier (ID). The value must be unique amongst all the IDs in the element’s home subtree and must contain at least one character. The value must not contain any space characters.

You can, for example, use classes to differentiate the different inputs. It would be just as easy to target them. e.g. http://jsfiddle.net/HxtfP/1/.

Alternatively, simply leave out id and use the name attribute for targetting: http://jsfiddle.net/HxtfP/2/