使用数字启动ID始终是不好的做法吗？ （CSS）

Question

In my project I have submissions and comments, each with an ID. Currently the ID's are just numeric and correspond to their database ID's. Everything is working fine but when I run it through the W3 validator I get the error:

value of attribute "id" invalid: "1" cannot start a name

I suppose instead that I could just precede all ids with some sort of string but then whenever I was using or manipulating the id in JQuery or PHP I have to do a id.replace('string', '') before using it. This seems rather cumbersome. Any advice?

Answer 1

Yes, using numbers as HTML element IDs is bad practice.

1. It violates W3C specification.
   You noted this in your question, and it is true for every HTML specification except HTML5

2. It is detrimental to SEO.
   Search-engine optimized HTML element IDs SHOULD reflect the content of the identified element. Check out How To Compose HTML ID and Class Names like a Rockstar by Meitar Moscovitz. It provides a good overview of this concept.

3. There can be server-side scripting issues.
   Back when I first started programming in ASP classic, I had to access submitted form fields by a syntax like Request.Form("some_id") . However, if I did Request.Form(1) it would return the value of the second field in the form collection, instead of the element with an Id equal to 1. This is a pretty standard behavior for working with collections. Its also similar with javascript, and could make your client side scripting more complicated to maintain as well.

Answer 2

I suggest you to use prefixes "comment-ID" or "post-ID".

If you need the id in JavaScript, you just have to id.substring(8) (for "comment-")

Answer 3

The HTML 5 Specification lifts this restriction. If you're worried about validity you might simply consider changing the DTD to HTML5's.

http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/elements.html#the-id-attribute

Answer 4

如果您正在操作元素，那么您可以使用$(this).jQueryOperation() - 因此您可以拥有前缀而无需替换任何内容！

Answer 5

The best way for your need is having the prefix for your class, I mean something like item- x and x is the number that you need.

But from my personal experience, it is better to use classes for your elements, and you know that you must use classes if the item is not unique in the page