jquery - reference input by name?

Question

The name of my form field is contact[0][state] and I'm trying to reference it via jquery to set a default value, but it's not working and I'm wondering if it's not working because of the brackets?

I'm trying:

$('input[name=concat[0][state]]').val('NY');

Victor · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-31 19:14:08Z

14

nevermind, you are missing quotes (").

try this:

$('input[name="concat[0][state]"]').val('NY');

I know the brackets would be a problem as an ID, but as a property it should work just fine as long as they are in quotes.

adding more info, you could also escape the brackets, but youy must still keep them in quotes.

$('input[name="concat\\[0\\]\\[state\\]"]').val('NY');

edited Jan 31, 2011 at 19:14

answered Jan 31, 2011 at 18:58

Victor

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Andy E · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-31 19:10:06Z

1

You need to double-escape the braces:

$("input[name=concat\\[0\\]\\[state\\]]").val('');

Edit: this appears to be broken in jQuery 1.4.4, but it works in 1.4.3.

edited Jan 31, 2011 at 19:10

answered Jan 31, 2011 at 18:59

Andy E

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14 Comments

Victor Over a year ago

that'd be the case if it was an ID, but as a value of a property it should be fine if its enclosed in quotes.

Andy E Over a year ago

@Victor: brackets aren't valid in IDs, whether they're escaped or not. This almost certainly will work, but I wasn't sure exactly how good the jQuery selector parser is to feel confident recommending quotes as the solution.

Šime Vidas Over a year ago

@Andy Can you provide a demo? It doesn't seem to work: jsfiddle.net/P5Pef

user113716 Over a year ago

How about docs: "If you wish to use any of the meta-characters ( such as !"#$%&'()*+,./:;?@[]^`{|}~ ) as a literal part of a name, you must escape the character with two backslashes: \\." EDIT: Seems like it should work according to the docs. Strange.

Andy E Over a year ago

@patrick, @Šime: Looks like double-escaping is broken in 1.4.4!

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