inconsistent behaviour in jQuery selector

Question

$('#a.b') // doesn't work

document.getElementById('a.b') // works

$('[id="a.b"]') // works

Can anyone explain why $('#a.b') doesn't work.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/605630/how-to-select-html-nodes-by-id-with-jquery-when-the-id-contains-a-dot — Saravanan N, Dec 04 '17 at 12:41
Read the documentation https://api.jquery.com/category/selectors/ — epascarello, Dec 04 '17 at 12:42
It's clear. http://learn.jquery.com/using-jquery-core/faq/how-do-i-select-an-element-by-an-id-that-has-characters-used-in-css-notation/ — Chay22, Dec 04 '17 at 12:42

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 04 '17 at 12:51

1

Do not use meta characters in your Id's while using Jquery.

. is a meta character and selector see them as regex. You need to escape to make it work. For ex \\.

In this case -

$('#a\\.b')

Javascript getElementById also works because, for it, it's just a String.

When you giving as id="a.b" it checks for a value and won't get treated as meta character.

edited Dec 04 '17 at 12:51

Raj

answered Dec 04 '17 at 12:43

Suresh Atta

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 04 '17 at 12:42

0

jQuery thinks it is a class. So, you write it using escape sequence as -

$('#a\\.b')

answered Dec 04 '17 at 12:42

Tushar Walzade

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 04 '17 at 12:45

0

You should use the escaping operator as follows:

$('#a\\.b')

jQuery does not allow meta-characters as a literal part of a name, and those must be escaped with two backslashes \\.

answered Dec 04 '17 at 12:45

graphy

3 Answers3