Is it "correct" to put a string as an id? for example id="Nick Drake". I read here that in html4 it is not. It works well for my purpose, just wondering if it's right to do so.
Thanks
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Possbile duplicate: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/70579/what-are-valid-values-for-the-id-attribute-in-html – Leonajs Sep 09 '17 at 10:33
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@Leonajs This "duplicate" was asked 8 years ago, well before html5. – Rocky Racoon Sep 09 '17 at 10:35
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This is cool: https://mathiasbynens.be/notes/html5-id-class – bhansa Sep 09 '17 at 10:38
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There is no problem what so ever to use a string as an ID.
ID and NAME tokens must begin with a letter ([A-Za-z]) and may be followed by any number of letters, digits ([0-9]), hyphens ("-"), underscores ("_"), colons (":"), and periods (".").
This does mean however, that you should not use spaces in your ID. "Nick Drake" should become "Nick_Drake"
Source: https://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_global_id.asp https://www.w3.org/TR/html4/types.html#type-id
If you ever have doubt about the validity of your html, run it through this service:
Erik Baars
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Thanks. However, it still works with a blank space. So I'll use alt instead. Thanks again. – Rocky Racoon Sep 09 '17 at 10:37
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using spaces will work for most purposes, but some javascript selectors will run into problems with it. – Erik Baars Sep 09 '17 at 10:39
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@RockyRacoon See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/596314/jquery-ids-with-spaces as an example why you should not use spaces. – Erik Baars Sep 09 '17 at 10:40
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From MDN:
This attribute's value must not contain whitespace (spaces, tabs etc.). Browsers treat non-conforming IDs that contain whitespace as if the whitespace is part of the ID. In contrast to the class attribute, which allows space-separated values, elements can only have one single ID.
Also, I don't know what your purpose is, but keep in mind that (emphasis is mine):
This attribute's value is an opaque string: this means that web author must not use it to convey any information. Particular meaning, for example semantic meaning, must not be derived from the string.
Jordi Nebot
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