Is there a wildcard selector for identifiers (id)?

Question

If I have an unknown amount of identifiers sharing a specific naming-scheme, is there a way to grab them all at once using jQuery?

// These are the IDs I\'d          


        

Answer 1

Those are IDs, but you can do something similar to:

$("[id^='instance']").click(...)

That's a bit expensive though - it helps if you can specify either a) the type of element or b) a general position in the DOM, such as:

$("#someContentDiv span[id^='instance']").click(...)

The [id^='...'] selector basically means "find an element whose ID starts with this string, similar to id$= (ID ends with this string), etc.

You can find a comprehensive list on the jQuery Docs page here.