Question

I will use model.id when referencing the id for the table in the database, and id when referencing the id given to elements in my html.

I have a django project where I am using some hidden form fields (all forms have the same id right now for that hidden field) to house the model.id. This works great as long as the model.id is known when the page is rendered.

I am now attempting to modify the process to work when no model.id is given (ie someone has chosen to create a new instance of my model). As far as the backend goes I have this working. No model.id supplied and the view knows it should give empty forms. At this point I choose not to create a new instance of the model, as I only want to if the user actually enters something in one of the forms.

If the user enters something in a form then the form processing creates a new instance of model and passes the id back to the users browser. What I was attempting to do is use the jquery form plugin to save the return data somewhere hidden, which I would then look at and use val to set all of the hidden fields’ ids to the model.id that was returned so the next field/form the user submits will know to write to the model that was just created.

Now looking at this I’m guessing the idea of having multiple elements with the same id is bad, but I really do want them to always be the same and only have the hidden fields there to house that same Model.id on every form on the page.

I tried doing something like follows. However only one of the ids on the page actually got the value assigned. Is there a different way I should be accomplishing this goal? Is there something I should add to make all occurrences of id to be set with something like .val(model.id)? If not, does anyone have any suggestions on how to go about this? Maybe django provides a cleaner way of doing exactly what I’m trying to accomplish?

A response returned from form submission.

<response>
    <the_model_id_brought_back>3732</the_model_id_brought_back>
    ...
<response>

The jQuery code attempting to set all of the “id_in_multiple_places” ids to the model.id returned.

jQuery('#descriptionForm').ajaxForm({
            target: '#response',
            success: function(data) {
                the_model_id = jQuery('#response').find("the_model_id_brought_back").html();
                jQuery('#id_in_multiple_places').val(the_model_id);
            }
        });

To explain why I have multiple forms like this. Forms consist of 1 visible field. Multiple forms are on the page. When a user leaves a field (which means they leave the form as well) I will submit that form to the server. This will allow their data to always be saved even if they stop half way through and throw their computer out a window. They can go to a different computer and pick up where they left off.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Now looking at this I’m guessing the idea of having multiple elements with the same id is bad

It’s not only bad, it’s impossible. You cannot do this. You can get around this by using classes, which don’t have to be unique, but you probably shouldn’t.

What you should do, is assign the elements sensible class names, and assign their common ancestor the ID. You can start at that element and traverse downwards to find the sub-elements by class name.