ID Attribute | id Property

Retrieves the string identifying the object.

Syntax

HTML	<ELEMENT ID = sID... >
Scripting	object.id [ = sID ]

Possible Values

sID	String that specifies or receives any alphanumeric string that begins with a letter. The underscore (_) can also be used.

The property is read/write. The property has no default value.

Expressions can be used in place of the preceding value(s), as of Microsoft® Internet Explorer 5. For more information, see About Dynamic Properties.

Remarks

In versions earlier than Microsoft® Internet Explorer 5, this property is read-only.

The id should be unique throughout the scope of the current document. If a document contains more than one object with the same identifier, the objects are exposed as a collection that can be referenced only in ordinal position.

Example

This example sets the ID attribute of each cell of a table. When the user clicks a cell, the object of the cell is passed to a function which returns the object's ID.

<SCRIPT>
function getID(oObject)
{
var id = oObject.id;
alert("This object's ID attribute is set to \"" + id + "\".");
}
</SCRIPT>
<TABLE BORDER COLS=3><TR>
<TD ID="firstCell"  onclick="getID(this);">Table Cell 1</TD>
<TD ID="secondCell" onclick="getID(this);">Table Cell 2</TD>
<TD ID="thirdCell"  onclick="getID(this);">Table Cell 3</TD>
</TR></TABLE>

This feature requires Microsoft® Internet Explorer 4.0 or later. Click the following icon to install the latest version. Then reload this page to view the sample.

Standards Information

This property is defined in HTML 4.0  and is defined in World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Document Object Model (DOM) Level 1 .

Applies To

STYLE, A, ACRONYM, ADDRESS, APPLET, AREA, B, BASE, BASEFONT, BDO, BGSOUND, BIG, BLOCKQUOTE, BODY, BR, BUTTON, CAPTION, CENTER, CITE, CODE, COL, COLGROUP, COMMENT, CUSTOM, DD, DEL, DFN, DIR, DIV, DL, DT, EM, EMBED, FIELDSET, FONT, FORM, FRAME, FRAMESET, HEAD, hn, HR, HTML, I, IFRAME, IMG, INPUT type=button, INPUT type=checkbox, INPUT type=file, INPUT type=hidden, INPUT type=image, INPUT type=password, INPUT type=radio, INPUT type=reset, INPUT type=submit, INPUT type=text, INS, ISINDEX, KBD, LABEL, LEGEND, LI, LINK, LISTING, MAP, MARQUEE, MENU, nextID, NOBR, NOFRAMES, NOSCRIPT, OBJECT, OL, OPTION, P, PLAINTEXT, PRE, Q, RT, RUBY, S, SAMP, SCRIPT, SELECT, SMALL, SPAN, STRIKE, STRONG, styleSheet, SUB, SUP, TABLE, TBODY, TD, TEXTAREA, TFOOT, TH, THEAD, TITLE, TR, TT, U, UL, VAR, WBR, XML, XMP