Is the "id" in an input tag necessary?

Question

<p>
  <input type="text" id="search" name="keywords" />
  <input type="submit" value="Search" name="Submit" />
</p>

For the above code I was getting validation errors, but once I removed the id="search" the validation was good and error-free. I thought you needed an id, but I'm wondering if it is supposed to be there?

Rockbound

What validation errors were you getting? – Gaia

I figured out that all I had to do was change id="search" to another name because there was another search input type with the same name. So all it wanted me to do was rename it. – Rockbound

Answer 1

Do you have any other elements with that id in the document? That would be the only reason for validation to fail. IDs are meant to be unique in the document, if you have it elsewhere it would be invalid.

IDs are good when you plan on doing some sort of client-side work on the element, as an element that has an ID can easily and quickly be retrieved by Javascript. It is also good when you are using <label> elements, as you can then use the for attribute (which takes an ID) to point to the field.

Other than that, it doesn't really matter.

Hussite

The label target is the main reason I use them. I hate hate hate websites that make me click ON the radio button or checkbox. – Chough

No there's nothing else with that id. I thought that was the case, but wasn't 100% sure. So I just removed it and it's fine. Thank you! – Rockbound

Answer 2

You do not need the ID attribute. The name attribute is the one that gets passed.

Siphonostele

Answer 3

For inputs that the user has access to, it is an accessibility requirement that the inputs have an associated label to give an informative description of what the input does. Thus, it is a requirement that these inputs have IDs that are unique across the page.

See: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/input#accessibility_concerns

Minny

A label element is different from an id attribute. The question asks about the former. – Intrench

Answer 4

Daniel is correct. A label's for attribute is associated with an input's name attribute. In this way, if you select a label with for="first_name", it will select the input with name="first_name".

Bedford

This answer is actually wrong. <label for="something"> points to the element with id="something", not name="something"! (I've also tested this in practice by clicking on labels; it really only works with IDs.) Cf. w3.org/TR/html-markup/label.html#label.attrs.for – Suds