Unpredictable input name in embedded visualforce page

Question

I am embedding a VisualForce page with a form and some inputs in a standard page layout. My form mark-up:

<apex:page standardController="Contact" extensions="ContactControllerExt" action="{!init}" showHeader="false" sidebar="false" doctype="html-5.0">
    <apex:pagemessages />

    <apex:outputpanel rendered="{!showAssignPanelB}">
        <apex:form >
            <apex:selectList id="area" size="1" label="Area">
                <apex:selectOptions value="{!regionSelectList}" />
            </apex:selectList>      
            <apex:commandButton value="Assign" action="{!assignContact}"/><br/>
            <input type="text" name="reason" placeholder="Reason" />
        <apex:commandButton value="Not Approved" action="{!mediaBNotApprove}"/><br/>
        </apex:form>   
    </apex:outputpanel>
</apex:page>

If I replace the text input field with:

<apex:inputText id="reason"/>

the element renders as:

<input type="text" name="j_id0:j_id28:reason" id="j_id0:j_id28:reason" />

and I don't know how to look for that name in the page parameters in the controller. The <select ...> element also renders with an unpredictable name like j_id0:j_id28:area

How can I get the rendered names more predictable?

Ralph Callaway · Accepted Answer · 2014-01-21 19:58:09Z

4

Short answer

Use the value attribute of the select list to bind your select list to a controller property, it'll then be accessible to apex code, without needing to look for it in the page parameters.

<apex:selectList value="{!yourControllerVar}" ...

Suggested Reading

Data binding is a fundamental feature of Visualforce and is very helpful to understand. You can read more about it in the Visualforce API Docs (search for "input") which sadly doesn't do a great job on the subject, but will hopefully get you going.

answered Jan 21, 2014 at 19:58

Ralph Callaway

24.9k18 gold badges120 silver badges199 bronze badges

Hey! Waaay easier than picking around for form data in HTML headers. Thanks Ralph!

JannieT
– JannieT

2014-01-22 06:29:10 +00:00
Commented Jan 22, 2014 at 6:29

Add a comment |

Michael Welburn · Accepted Answer · 2014-01-21 19:55:06Z

The rendered names are going to show up like that when it converts the VF tags to HTML. You have a couple options:

Use Visualforce Component references:
- http://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/pages/Content/pages_best_practices_accessing_id.htm
Use a CSS selector with something like jQuery that looks for an "ends with" like $('[id$="reason"]')
- http://api.jquery.com/attribute-ends-with-selector/

Additionally, your use case might not necessarily require you to know the ID at run time. Is this something you could handle with data binding (as mentioned in @Ralph's answer)?

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