[DOMCore] default value of id attribute

• From: David Flanagan <dflanagan@mozilla.com>
• Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2011 17:06:42 -0700
• To: www-dom@w3.org
• Message-ID: <4E559212.4020601@mozilla.com>

DOM Core §5.7 says:

> The id attribute must return the result of invoking getAttribute() 
> with "id" as argument. 

And also says:

> The getAttribute(name) method must run these steps:
>
>     If the context object is in the HTML namespace and its node 
> document is an HTML document, let name be converted to ASCII lowercase.
>
>     Return the value of the first attribute in the context object's 
> attributes whose qualified name is name, or null otherwise.

So, for a newly created element e, with no "id" content attribute, e.id 
ought to be null.

But this contradicts HTML §2.8.1:
> In general, on getting, if the content attribute is not present, the 
> IDL attribute must act as if the content attribute's value is the 
> empty string;
And it also contradicts the behavior of Firefox, Chrome and Safari (at 
least) in which document.createElement("div").id is "" instead of null.

     David

Received on Thursday, 25 August 2011 00:07:15 UTC