Question

interesting one. i’m working on a big, modular form that the user can add or remove services in and need to reach into the DOM, copy an HTML element, and add a value to the end of both it and it’s children’s ID’s.

So for example:

<li id="serviceModule" class="serviceModule">
    <ol>
        <li id="subModuleTypeA">subModule</li>
        <li id="subModuleTypeB">
            <ol>
                <li id="subModuleTypeASubModuleX">subSubModule</li>
                <li id="subModuleTypeASubModuleY">subSubModule</li>
                <li id="subModuleTypeASubModuleZ">subSubModule</li>
            </ol>
        </li>
        <li id="subModuleTypeC">subModule</li>
    </ol>
</li>

Would become:

<li id="serviceModule1" class="serviceModule">
    <ol>
        <li id="subModuleTypeA1">subModule</li>
        <li id="subModuleTypeB1">
            <ol>
                <li id="subModuleTypeASubModuleX1">subSubModule</li>
                <li id="subModuleTypeASubModuleY1">subSubModule</li>
                <li id="subModuleTypeASubModuleZ1">subSubModule</li>
            </ol>
        </li>
        <li id="subModuleTypeC1">subModule</li>
    </ol>
</li>

Method that adds value:

$.fn.valulator = function(magic){

    var thiis = $(this),
        el,
        id;

    thiis.add(thiis.children()).each(function(){

        el = $(this);
        id = el.attr('id');

        el.attr('id', id + magic);
    });

    return this;
};

Binding that triggers valulator:

$add.click(function(event){

    event.preventDefault();

    $index = $index + 1;
    $('.serviceModule')
        .clone()
        .valulator($index)
        .appendTo('#services');
});

Thanks for your help! Here’s a jsFiddle:
http://jsfiddle.net/phqvr/3/

---

UPDATE

Finding that the first issue i’m running into within valulator() is that children() only brings up direct descendants.. instead i need to search ALL elements.

Answer 1

Got it; there were two issues.

1) as mentioned in the update, children() only traversed one level down- reworked it to:

thiis.find('*').andSelf().each()

2) in my Fiddle, there was an added conditional if(el[id]) that would always fail. replaced with below code to prevent additions to elements that didn’t have ID’s to begin with:

if (id){}

Full working code here: http://jsfiddle.net/phqvr/4/

    $.fn.valulator = function(magic){

        var thiis = $(this),
            el,
            id;

        thiis.find('*').andSelf().each(function(){

            el = $(this);
            id = el.attr('id');            

            if (id){

                el.attr('id', id + magic);
            }
        });

        return this;
    };