Question

What is a common way to pass data for formula fields, to specify a quantifier. I would currently do as follows:

<input type="text" name="myfield" class="inputfieldstyle quantified" id="q_12" value="foo" />

where q_12 is generic.

But there some inherent problems with the approach:

• What if i want to give it an id for some js/css reason?
• q_12 is not easy to read with js:
  var quant =
parseInt(element.id.split('_').pop())
• id is not made for passing values

How should I handle this? Is there a common way? Is there a way suggested by w3c?

Answer 1

You could extend the hidden fields idea of Guillaume Lebourgeois. If you’re worried about having two inputs for each, you could always adopt the “data-” attribute approach as detailed in the following link: http://ejohn.org/blog/html-5-data-attributes/

<input type="hidden" name="myname" id="my_id" 
       data-myData1="somedata" data-myData2="somemoredata" value="" >

and then use getAttribute to return the value (http://www.devguru.com/technologies/javascript/17457.asp):

document.getElementbyId("my_id").getAttribute("data-myData1")       
document.getElementbyId("my_id").getAttribute("data-myData2")

Or if you are using jQuery:

$("#my_id").attr("data-myData1")    

Of course, you would have to roll this up into the value before passing across pages, but its still a possiblity.