[JQUERY] Help me with my selector, the ID is dynamically changing every page load.

Question

Hi, I want to scan a website using jQuery, but the ID is constantly changing, but there's a permanent pattern for the ID that I'm searching for:

app7019261521_the_coinb4678bc2
app7019261521_the_coind42fgr23
app7019261521_the_coing0992gvb
app7019261521_the_coin12e5d0aa

The IDs always starts with app7019261521_the_coin

But my problem is I don't know how to put that in jQuery selector.

$("#app7019261521_the_coin")

Doesn't seem to work

So how can I make this work?

Answer 1

can you set a class and just call it by a class name?

you may also be able to try

$("div[id^=app7019261521_the_coin]")

Answer 2

This will find all div's that start with *app7019261521_the_coin*

Replace div with whatever element type you are searching for.

$j('div[id^=app7019261521_the_coin]')

Remember this is not very optimal, as it causes the script to check the id attribute of every matched element.

You might want to see how you can add a class to the element or at least find the parent element first and traverse from there.

Answer 3

$("[id^=app7019261521_the_coin]")

Should work - but its MUCH slower selector than knowing the real ID - or assigning a class. This selector will scan every element on the page one at a time, there is no good way for this selector to be optimizied. 9 times out of 10 though you could build a better selector: Is this #app7019... element the direct child of another element that is easier to determine? like a id='container'?

$("#conainter > [id^=app7019261521_the_coin]"); for instance

From the jQuery Selector Documentation

[attribute^=value]    Returns: Array<Element(s)>
Matches elements that have the specified attribute and it starts 
with a certain value.