How to get a value of an element by name instead of ID

Question

Use the name attribute selector:

$("input[name=nameGoesHere]").val();

$('[name=whatever]').val()

The jQuery documentation is your friend.

Use the name attribute selector:

$("input[name='nameGoesHere']").val();

It is a mandatory requirement to include quotes around the value, see: http://api.jquery.com/attribute-equals-selector/

To get the value, we can use multiple attributes, one of them being the name attribute. E.g

$("input[name='nameOfElement']").val();

We can also use other attributes to get values

HTML

<input type="text" id="demoText" demo="textValue" />

JS

$("[demo='textValue']").val();

This works fine .. here btnAddCat is button id

$('#btnAddCat').click(function(){
        var eventCategory=$("input[name=txtCategory]").val();
        alert(eventCategory);
    });

//name directly given
<input type="text" name="MeetingDateFrom">
var meetingDateFrom = $("input[name=MeetingDateFrom]").val();

//Handle name array
<select multiple="multiple" name="Roles[]"></select>
 var selectedValues = $('select[name="Roles[]"] option:selected').map(function() {
    arr.push(this.value);
  });