jQuery select ID containing dot

Question

I have some nodes which may occasionally contain a dot in their ID attribute,

Example: <div id="site_someSite.com"></div>

Then I need to select this element ( I'm using jQuery ) and I do this:

variable = $('#site_'+user); user being 'someSite.com'

And I get nothing in the variable. I suppose this is due to the dot in the name which jQuery is accepting as a class. Anyone has any idea how I can work around this without not-using a dot?

Answer 1

You can use it but escape it by backslashes,like $('#example\\.afterdottext');

As per docs

To use any of the meta-characters ( such as !"#$%&'()*+,./:;<=>?@[]^`{|}~ ) as a literal part of a name, it must be escaped with with two backslashes: \.

Answer 2

Working jsFiddle Demo

Use attribute selectors¹:

var site = 'someSite.com';
var variable = $('[id="site_' + site + '"]');

// do something
variable.css('background', 'yellow');

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References:

• ¹ Attribute Equals Selector [name="value"] - jQuery API Documentation