getElementsByName() question

[Ezequal]

After some severe experimentation I got to googling for an answer and stumbled upon these forums.

So my big question is, is it possible to use getElementsByName() with a variable as the parameter? And if not what is another way I can get at each element based on a variable list of names.

var curObjSet = document.getElementsByName(String(idStack[y])).item(0)

I'm trying desperately to make my code organic and not to have to hard code field names but without this working its leaving me with out options.

Thank you for any time and help provided.

- Eric

[rnd me]

depending on what's in idStack[y], it should be fine.

i don't remember .item(0), perhaps [0] would work better.

also, it's probably better to use ID since some browsers are screwy with the name property.

[Old Pedant]

Iyou use ID then getElementsByName() won't work if the name and ID aren't the same.

And I dunno how getElementsByName() behaves on a set of radio buttons. Is it the same in all browsers??

Ahhh...w3schools says that indeed you get one reference to the entire set, with the set converted to an array:
http://www.w3schools.com/htmldom/met...entsbyname.asp

Okay, consistent, at least.

[rnd me]

Originally Posted by Old Pedant

Iyou use ID then getElementsByName() won't work if the name and ID aren't the same.

And I dunno how getElementsByName() behaves on a set of radio buttons. Is it the same in all browsers??
.

input names are probably pretty cohesive between browsers. but name's behavior on non-form elements is inconstant, notably so in IE.

if you need to grab a few non-form elements, use document.getElementById in conjunction with unique ids.

if you need several, or a couple groups of non-form elements, use class attribs and the ubiquitous getElementsByClass, available in the "post a javascript" section.


if you just want to grab groups of inputs, i apologize for any confusion, getElementsByName should work just fine for that.