Unique element ID, even if element doesn't have one

Question

I\'m writing a GreaseMonkey script where I\'m iterating through a bunch of elements. For each element, I need a string ID that I can use to reference that element later. The

Answer 1

If you can write to the DOM (I'm sure you can). I would solve this like this:

Have a function return or generate an ID:

//(function () {

  var idCounter = new Date().getTime();
  function getId( node ) {
    return (node.id) ? node.id : (node.id = 'tempIdPrefix_' + idCounter++ );
  }

//})();

Use this to get ID's as needed:

var n = document.getElementById('someid');
getId(n);  // returns "someid"

var n = document.getElementsByTagName('div')[1];
getId(n);  // returns "tempIdPrefix_1224697942198"

This way you don't need to worry about what the HTML looks like when the server hands it to you.