On Fri, 2010-07-02 at 08:49 -0400, Bob McConnell wrote:
> From: Ashley Sheridan
>
> > Not sure if my other email got through earlier. Replacing the name
> > attribute on form fields with the id one is not feasible at all. They
> > don't even behave the same. What would happen if you had two forms on
> a
> > page that both had an element with the same name? Using the name
> > attribute, everything is fine, but not so if you were using the id
> > instead.
>
> These conditions sound like a bugs to me. I can't imagine any reason why
> different forms could have the same name or id. That applies to any set
> of elements on a page. Each one must have a unique moniker, no matter
> which attribute you use. Even the simple validations I use will complain
> about your duplicates, as they should. Making them all unique also makes
> it much simpler to use tools like Selenium or Silk Test to automate the
> testing process.
>
> Looking at the HTML 4.01 references given earlier in this thread, I see
> that id is now a core attribute, i.e. it is available for all but a
> handful of tags, while name is only available for the tags where it is
> explicitly included. So it still appears to me that id is the preferred
> attribute, as it is more generally available.
>
> Bob McConnell
>
It's not a bug in the code. Imagine this scenario:
<form name="product_filter">
<input type="submit" name="action" value="By Product Name"/>
<input type="submit" name="action" value="By Product ID"/>
</form>
A valid form with two input elements given the same name, which sends a
different value to the server depending on which button was triggered.
Seems valid enough to me. Only one value is ever sent, so why do I need
to give them unique names and further complicate my server-side code?
Imagine further that there is another form on the page containing the
product listings, and each one has a delete button. Now we all know the
folly of putting things like delete code into an <a> tag, so a button
will do the job:
<button type="submit" name="action" value="pid_1">Delete
Product</button>
<button type="submit" name="action" value="pid_2">Delete
Product</button>
<button type="submit" name="action" value="pid_3">Delete
Product</button>
Perfectly valid, and something that is done a lot on apps I've seen and
built. Giving each a unique name just gets in the way, as you need to
use some sort of loop and pattern matching on the server just to get the
data you need.
ID is not a substitute for name on form elements. The reason name is
only available for a few elements is because it has a specific use-case,
which is not the same as the ID attribute at all.
I never said the forms themselves would have the same name or id, but
elements within them might have the same name, and two forms might have
elements with the same name. If the ID were to be a substitute for the
name attribute, then this could never happen, our scripts would become
more complex, and all for no gain.
Thanks,
Ash
http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk
