SPD and form fields - can I refer to field IDs by their SPD variables, “ff6{$Pos}”?

Question

I'm working on a NewForm.aspx in SPD. The form controls and labels have an ID such as "ff6{$Pos}", "ff4description{$Pos}" and so forth. As I mouse over those items, I see SPD calls it a "code hyperlink" but googling that term lead me nowhere.

I'm working on some javascript code that will run on the form after it loads. I'm using jQuery and would like to reference the form elements using their HTML ID values. I'm writing the js code there on the page in SPD.

Is there a way of writing the javascript code so I can use those SPD-generated variables (e.g. "ff4description{$Pos}") so they get replaced with the actual values the same way the form elements themeselves get it? Some sort of "yeah, wrap it in percent symbols" thing?

Answer 1

Forget the SPD-generated IDs in the code. You'll need to get client-side markup since javascript runs on the client.

Use the F12 developer tools to find a client-side attribute you can hook into. As Eric says here, the Title attribute can be very helpful here. So, for example:

$("input[title=Title]").val("Here is the title");

Text fields and choice fields are pretty easy to set like this. More complex fields like lookups and People Pickers are doable will require a bit more effort.

Answer 2

Those will be dynamically filled in at runtime, so to access them you'll either have to view the resulting HTML source of the page to see the IDs, use a different selector like the Title attribute of the item, or replace the SPD generated IDs with your own.