Problem
dojo selector –  “dojo.query” doesn’t work for elements generated by xpages

Background

This is a follow on to the jQuery selector function for xPages – x$(“#{id:inputText1}”) article I wrote previously.

Solution

Turns out that dojo.query suffers from the same problem:  dojo.query cannot understand elements with colons (:) in it. We have to convert the idTag of the element to escape the colons with a backslash.

• dojo.query(“view:_id1:inputText1”).style(“border”, “1px solid red”) – will not work
• dojo.query(“view\:_id1\:inputText1”).style(“border”, “1px solid red”) – will work and is converted using the function

So I have updated my x$ function to cover dojo and jQuery

function x$(idTag, param, jd){ //Updated 28 Feb 2012
      idTag=idTag.replace(/:/gi, "\\:")+(param ? param : "");
      return( jd=="d" ? "#"+idTag : $("#"+idTag));
}

the param and jd parameters are optional (in fact jd is only necessary if you are using dojo)

Interesting Note

For the uninitiated you will note that jQuery returns a $() rather than a string – this is because it is actually returning a jQuery Object. That is a fundamental difference in the way that dojo and jQuery function as code libraries.

Examples

here is an example code of how it would be used in dojo or jQuery

//dojo
dojo.query(x$("#{id:inputText1}", "", "d")).style("border", "1px solid red")

//jQuery equivalent

x$("#{id:inputText1}").css("background-image", "1px solid red")

An example is shown below

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<xp:view xmlns:xp="http://www.ibm.com/xsp/core">

<xp:br></xp:br>
 <xp:scriptBlock id="scriptBlock1">
 <xp:this.value><![CDATA[
 function x$(idTag, param, jd){ //Updated 28 Feb 2012
 idTag=idTag.replace(/:/gi, "\\:")+(param ? param : "");
 return( jd=="d" ? "#"+idTag : $("#"+idTag));
 }
 ]]>
 </xp:this.value>
 </xp:scriptBlock>
 <xp:inputText id="inputText1"></xp:inputText>
 <xp:br></xp:br>
 <xp:br></xp:br>
 <xp:button value="Change Border (Fail)" id="button2">
 <xp:eventHandler event="onclick" submit="false">
 <xp:this.script><![CDATA[dojo.query("#{id:inputText1}").style("border", "1px solid red")]]></xp:this.script>
 </xp:eventHandler>
 </xp:button>
 <xp:br></xp:br>
 <xp:br></xp:br>
 <xp:button value="Change Border X$" id="button1">
 <xp:eventHandler event="onclick" submit="false">
 <xp:this.script><![CDATA[dojo.query(x$("#{id:inputText1}", "", "d")).style("border", "1px solid red")]]></xp:this.script>
 </xp:eventHandler>
 </xp:button>
</xp:view>