javascript - Unique identifier for HTML elements

Question

Besides of the ID, if you say, you want a unique identifier for an HTML element (let say a div).

I browsed the DOM for something (like a number or string) that is unique for each element; but the DOM is big and I failed to find that in the Internet.

Is there any property (in the DOM obviously) that is unique only to that element? (Other than the ID and also you don't specify it, but comes when the DOM is constructed)

Answer 1

As Pekka says, it would be easier if you would describe what you want to do. Until then here are two suggestions.

Unless you actually need to express the id as some kind of string you can save the normal DOM reference.

If you do need to express it as a string for some reason, then you'll need to assign a unique id yourself.

var getId = (function () {
  var incrementingId = 0;
  return function(element) {
    if (!element.id) {
      element.id = "id_" + incrementingId++;
      // Possibly add a check if this ID really is unique
    }
    return element.id;
  };
}());