get or set an element's unique id with MooTools

Sunday, October 05, 2008

Here is a simple MooTools script that adds a getId method to the Element class. The getId method simply returns the element's id if it already exists, if not it generates a unique id, assigns it to the element and returns that. The generated id does not persist from page to page, however this little script comes in handy sometimes.

Element.implement({      
   getId: function(){
      if(!this.get('id')){ 
        var uniqueId = this.get('tag') + "-" + $time();
        while($(uniqueId)){ uniqueId = this.get('tag') + "-" + $time(); }
        this.set('id', uniqueId);      
      }
      return this.get('id');
   }
});

So usage would look like this:

var theIdofTheFirstLink = $(document.body).getElement('a').getId();

//or something like this would make sure every element on the page has an id
$$('*').getId();

Labels: javascript, mootools

| | posted by Jason J. Jaeger  |