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Assign ID and Name Attributes to Form Controls

While working with controls in HTML forms, you can assign ID as well as NAME attributes to the controls. You can then access both ID and NAME attributes through client-side scripting. You should note a couple of differences between ID and NAME attributes. First, when a form is submitted, only the NAME is passed. If you have an INPUT text control with both ID and NAME attributes, then only the NAME/VALUE pair is submitted. Second, the ID attribute can be referred to directly in a script while the NAME attribute must be referred to by including the NAME of the parent form, if the element is a child of a form element. If the text control is not a child of a form element, the NAME attribute can be used to identify the text control.

For example, consider this form with just one text control:

 

Because the ID attribute has been defined, you can access the text control directly in the script as:

     var UserSSNNumber = IDUserSSN.Value;

If you use the NAME attribute to access the text control, then you will write:

     var UserSSNNumber = MyForm.NameUserSSN.Value;

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