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HTML HTML Forms Form Basics The Input Element

I don't quite get the difference between the id and name attributes in these cases.

I supose that ID attribute is used to target an element. What's the purpose of the name attribute. Nick explains briefly but it wasn't so clear to me. Couldn't I just use the ID?

3 Answers

Darryl Mah
Darryl Mah
5,492 Points

The purpose of a name attribute, in an input tag, is so that you can access/identify the information submitted by the user, for each input. When a user submits the form, you’ll be able to view the data associated with that particular field, something the ID will not do, at least to my understanding. The ID is used to target the element for your css. In this example it seems a bit redundant to use. Since I’m guessing they applied the css to the input tag, since they all have the same look, and the ID wasn’t used for anything.

Robert O'Toole
Robert O'Toole
6,366 Points

yeah its really hard to apply this stuff or see the actual uses when they arent bringing in any css or javascript...

Robert O'Toole
Robert O'Toole
6,366 Points

@darryl your explanation helped a lot though thank you