Difference between id and name attributes in HTML

html attributes
yogibear picture yogibear · Sep 9, 2009 · Viewed 416.1k times · Source

What is the difference between the id and name attributes? They both seem to serve the same purpose of providing an identifier.

I would like to know (specifically with regards to HTML forms) whether or not using both is necessary or encouraged for any reasons.

Answer

John Fisher picture John Fisher · Sep 9, 2009

The name attribute is used when sending data in a form submission. Different controls respond differently. For example, you may have several radio buttons with different id attributes, but the same name. When submitted, there is just the one value in the response - the radio button you selected.

Of course, there's more to it than that, but it will definitely get you thinking in the right direction.

Related questions

Make HTML5 video poster be same size as video itself

Does anyone know how to resize the HTML5 video poster such that it fits the exact dimensions of the video itself? here's a jsfiddle which shows the problem: http://jsfiddle.net/zPacg/7/ here's that code: HTML: <video controls width="100%" …

Read More
CSS values using HTML5 data attribute

width: attr(data-width); I want to know if there's any way it's possible to set a css value using HTML5's data- attribute the same way that you can set css content. Currently it doesn't work. HTML <div data-width="600…

Read More
Get list of data-* attributes using javascript / jQuery

Given an arbitrary HTML element with zero or more data-* attributes, how can one retrieve a list of key-value pairs for the data. E.g. given this: <div id='prod' data-id='10' data-cat='toy' data-cid='42'>…

Read More