jQuery(“#”+id) Vs document.getElementById(“”+id)

Question

I have following id for one of my div id="ftbutton_1357567084/Team:8/User:10/Image:195" i want to replace its html after ajax being called.

When i try to do this using jQuery something like following it doesn't work

jQuery("#"+id).html(SOME HTML HERE);

Where as following code works

document.getElementById(id).innerHTML = SOME HTML HERE;

I know ID should not contain some special characters

ID attributes should be = after an initial letter (a-z or A-Z), may also use 
periods and colons, in addition to letters, numbers, hyphens, and underscores. 

Ref How do I select an element by an ID that has characters used in CSS notation?

But for some reason i can't change the id of each element as it is thought the site.

I also tried following but it doesn't works

function jq( myid ) {
  return "#" + myid.replace( /(:|\.)/g, "\\$1" );
}
jQuery(jq("#"+id)).html(SOME HTML HERE);

I just want to know if this is a case, do i need to use document.getElementById(""+id) instead jQuery("#"+id) ?

OR in other words

Is document.getElementById(""+id) is more reliable than jQuery("#"+id) ?

Answer 1

Do this:

$('[id="ftbutton_1357567084/Team:8/User:10/Image:195"]');

It's actually a bit of an interesting question. Most likely jQuery thinks : is initiating a filter, like $('div:visible') and getting gunked up not realizing it's a full ID.

Answer 2

/ is a meta character, you have to escape it as well :

To use any of the meta-characters ( such as !"#$%&'()*+,./:;<=>?@[\\]^`{|}~ ) as a literal part of a name, it must be escaped with with two backslashes: \\\\ .

So this should work fine:

function escape_selector( selector ) {
  return selector.replace( /([!"#$%&'()*+,./:;<=>?@\[\\\]^`{|}~])/g, "\\$1" );
}

(As roasted mentioned in his comment , you need to drop the '#' + as well, otherwise you add it twice to the selector).

DEMO

Answer 3

The issue is that you're adding the # twice. Once in the function and once in the actual jQuery call. Should be like this:

function jq( myid ) {
  return "#" + myid.replace( /(:|\.|\/)/g, "\\$1" ); //note that added `/`
}
jQuery(jq(id)).html(SOME HTML HERE); //don't add # again!

A slightly unrelated tip: always remember you can initiate a jQuery instance using an actual DOM object:

jQuery(document.getElementById(someId)); //this will work

Answer 4

The simplest answer seems to be:

function jq( myid ) {
  return $(document.getElementById(myid));
}

jq(myid).html(...);

Answer 5

the correct function is:

function jq( myid ) {
  return *$("#" + myid)*.replace( /(:|\.)/g, "\\$1" );
}
jQuery(jq("#"+id)).html(SOME HTML HERE);