jquery selector not working with [ ]

Question

I\'m using jQuery to manipulate form data in an osCommerce instance and I\'m having trouble selecting some elements.

The script generates textareas with the id product_d

Answer 1

$("#product_description\\[1\\]").attr("id", "products_description_1");

is the right code, look at "ID-Selector" on jQuery.com

Answer 2

Try this:

$('#product_description\\[1\\]')

Note that while this may work, the bracket characters are not valid for use in IDs prior to HTML5 (although they're fine for use in classes).

Answer 3

The [] characters are not valid ID characters in HTML4. Don't expect consistent results in different browsers if you use them.

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EDIT:

If you just can't control the format of the IDs on the server side, you could do this:

$("*[id='product_description[1]']")

but it will be terribly slow in browsers that don't support querySelectorAll.

(Note that you shouldn't need the \\ here because of the quotation marks around the value.)