Who are you?

Who are you?

When utilizing forms, it is helpful to use a combination of the ID and name attributes, I typically name and ID my form and nearly all of my form fields so it is easy to manage them programmatically. Here is an example:

<form id="contactForm" name="contactForm">
    <input id="firstName" name="firstName" type="text">
    <input id="lastName" name="lastName" type="text">
    <input id="phone" name="phone" type="tel">
    <input id="submit" name="submit" type="button" value"Contact Us">
</form>

Accessing via ID or Name

As you can see, I made both the names and IDs the same. The reason I do this is because sometimes you use the ID in JavaScript to grab a field and in form processing, the form object, which is accessed via the name attribute, is used.

To access a field by ID:

document.getElementByID("firstName").value;

To access a field via the name attribute:

document.formObject["firstName"].value;

Either one is a valid access method, but with forms and their processing, the form object is typically easier and used more often.

Happy Coding!

Clay Hess

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