Is there a wildcard selector for identifiers (id)?

Question

If I have an unknown amount of identifiers sharing a specific naming-scheme, is there a way to grab them all at once using jQuery?

// These are the IDs I\'d          


        

Answer 1

If you really want to match classes, not ids, the syntax is a bit more involved, since class can have multiple values.

// handle elements like <div class="someclass1"></div>
$('[class^="someclass"]').click(function() {
   // do stuff
});

// handle elements like <div class="foo someclass1"></div>
$('[class*=" someclass"]').click(function() {
   // do stuff
});

Answer 2

Those are IDs, but you can do something similar to:

$("[id^='instance']").click(...)

That's a bit expensive though - it helps if you can specify either a) the type of element or b) a general position in the DOM, such as:

$("#someContentDiv span[id^='instance']").click(...)

The [id^='...'] selector basically means "find an element whose ID starts with this string, similar to id$= (ID ends with this string), etc.

You can find a comprehensive list on the jQuery Docs page here.

Answer 3

No need for additional expr or anything fancy if you have jQuery

jQuery('[class*="someclass"]').click(function(){
});

jQuery('[id*="someclass"]').click(function(){
});

As noted: https://stackoverflow.com/a/2220874/2845401