XHTML Strict + Submitting Forms?

[mshafrir]

If you are following XHTML 1.0 Strict and specify the id attribute as opposed to the name attribute, how do you handle submitting a form to a backend application? Name is what is passed to the form, not id, unless I'm missing something.

[stymiee]

You can still use name in XHTML. Forms won't work without them.

[mshafrir]

You can still use name in XHTML. Forms won't work without them.

But based off of the XHTML 1.0 Spec [http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/#h-4.10]

4.10. The elements with 'id' and 'name' attributes

HTML 4 defined the name attribute for the elements a, applet, form, frame, iframe, img, and map. HTML 4 also introduced the id attribute. Both of these attributes are designed to be used as fragment identifiers.

In XML, fragment identifiers are of type ID, and there can only be a single attribute of type ID per element. Therefore, in XHTML 1.0 the id attribute is defined to be of type ID. In order to ensure that XHTML 1.0 documents are well-structured XML documents, XHTML 1.0 documents MUST use the id attribute when defining fragment identifiers on the elements listed above. See the HTML Compatibility Guidelines for information on ensuring such anchors are backward compatible when serving XHTML documents as media type text/html.

Note that in XHTML 1.0, the name attribute of these elements is formally deprecated, and will be removed in a subsequent version of XHTML.

So I'm confused... is name deprecated or required?


Ah I see... name is only deprecated for certain elements.

[vgarcia]

Form fields (textboxes, radio buttons, etc.) still use name.

[AutisticCuckoo]

You don't need name for the form itself, but you will need it for the form controls that need to be submitted to the server.

The id attribute replaces name for a number of element types, when it comes to identifying the element. For form controls, however, it's a different matter. Multiple form controls can share the same name, e.g., in the case of radio buttons. That cannot be achieve with ids, which must be unique.