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create variables for all elements using id attributes

need to create variables from all elements having id attribute
name of each variable should be just the value of id attribute
for example <div id='btnsave'>SAVE</div> - should be a variable named btnsave
here is my try - without success:
let els = $("*");
els.forEach(function(el){
if(el.hasId()){
console.log(el.attr('id'));
window[el] = $('#' + el);
}
});

If you're using id attributes for your elements then they already have references accessible through the properties of the window object which match their id value:
console.log(window.foo.textContent);
console.log(window.fizz.textContent);
<p id="foo">bar</p>
<p id="fizz">buzz</p>
Given your comment under the question:
I have a lot of divs as buttons and is simpler to write btnsave.on('click'... then $('#btnsave').on('click'...
In that case you simply need to cache the selector at the top of your script (within scope) and use it where required. This is a standard pattern to follow.
Creating jQuery objects from every element in the DOM with an id and storing them in the window object is an anti-pattern, which will cause performance issues and most likely break native code which expects those references to contain DOMElement objects, not jQuery objects.
Do not do it.

To get elements by any attribute you can use query selector.
let elementsWithId = {}
document.querySelectorAll('[id]').forEach(el => {
elementsWithId[el.id] = el
})
console.log(elementsWithId)
You can record a jQuery element to window variable. Example:
window[el.id] = $(el)
But as people mentioned, this is a bad practice.

Assign HTML elements ID to document.queryselector shorthand variables in a loop

I am new to Javascript development.
I am trying to assign HTML elements IDs stored in an array to shorthands to be used in my function later.
So that instead of writing :
let addprop = document.querySelector(`#addprop`);
let readprop = document.querySelector(`#readprop`);
let editprop = document.querySelector(`#editprop`);
let footer = document.querySelector(`#footer`);
let association = document.querySelector(`#association`);
I can attribute elements ids that i store in an array like this :
let arrayElements = ["addprop", "readprop", "editprop", "footer", "association"] ;
arrayElements.forEach(el => { return(new Function (`${el} = document.querySelector("#${el}");`)()); });
Now, this bit of code works but from what I read here :
Execute JavaScript code stored as a string
This is probably not a good way to do it and also declares global variables.
One problem I encountered is that if I try to directly execute the assignment like this :
el = document.querySelector(`#${el}`);
Then the el value takes the value of the named access ID element (https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/window-object.html#named-access-on-the-window-object) and breaks the code.
So I resorted to generate a string first then execute it.
I could simply assign each shorthand manually but I spent way too much time trying to make this work and am now left curious as to what would be a good solution or approach for this.
And would the scope limitations for loops simply forbid me to do this without using global variables ?
edit : switched the working code in one line
Possible answer :
1 - does it matter to declare global variables like that ? As these variables already exist globally because of browsers named access for elements IDs.
2 - By kiranvj's answer, a solution can be to store in an object structured as keys being the shortcuts and the full strings being the values, and calling the shortcuts with the object[key] method ; or using destructuring to assign the values to variable directly with :
const {addprop, readprop, editprop, idfooter, assocpatients} = elements;
I feel like I am missing something on this last one but it also seems to work.
In the end I will stick with my first code as condensing the function in one line seems to negate the risks of cross site scripting (?), and global values for the variables assigned though this method anyway already exist because of named access.

You can create a dictionary with all the elements with ID and then destroy it into your variables, ignoring the unused ones.
function getAllElementsWithId() {
let elements = {}
for (let el of document.querySelectorAll('[id]')) {
if (!(el.id in elements)) {
elements[el.id] = el
}
}
return elements
}
let { addprop, readprop, editprop, footer, association } = getAllElementsWithId()
This uses document.querySelectorAll (link to MDN) to get all elements with an ID. Notice that for big pages this could be a performance issue.
Also, what you would usually do is to add them into a container, in this case it seems like a dictionary.
let arrayElements = ["addprop", "readprop", "editprop", "footer", "association"]
let elementsId = Object.fromEntries(arrayElements.map(id => [id, document.getElementById(id)]))
This uses Object.fromEntries (link to MDN) to generate the dictionary. Also I'm using document.getElementById (link to MDN) instead of document.querySelector so you don't need to add the hashtag before the id.

If you are concerned about global scope, you can try something like below. Use forEach instead of map . map also work but since you are not handling the return of map, forEach would be a better choice.
let arrayElements = ["addprop", "readprop", "editprop", "footer", "association"];
let elements = {};
arrayElements.forEach(el => elements[el] = document.querySelector(`#${el}`));
// access variables like elements.ID-NAME
console.log(elements);
<div id="addprop"></div>
<div id="readprop"></div>
Object destructing can be used if you know the object key name.
example : let {addprop} = element;
Another thing which you might be interested is Automatic global variables
This means a new variable (scoped to window) with the name of element id is created for all the elements in page. See the html5 spec. I would not recommend using it though.
So you don't have to call like document.querySelector('addprop')
addprop variable will have the DOM object.
See this example
// these works due to automatic global varaibles binding
alert(addprop);
console.log(addprop);
<div id="addprop">Some contents</div>

How to make a variable which consists of multiple 'divs'

I have a question regarding variables in Javascript.
When I assign a var to a ID I do it like this:
var x = document.getElementById("div_name");
But I would like to make a variable which consists of multiple 'divs'.
I thought this might work but I does not:
var x = document.getElementById("div_name"),document.getElementById("div_name2");
Can someone please help me find the right code syntax and explain why the syntax I tried is incorrect.

So, If you just want them as a list of div's you could do this:
var x = [document.getElementById("div_name"),document.getElementById("div_name2")];
Just wrap them up with [].

If your var should contain more than one object (div in your case), then you need to have more variable or, better, an array.
You can create yor array by using following code.
var x = [document.getElementById("div_name"), document.getElementById("div_name2")];
This is due to the fact that different DIVs in the DOM page are different objects...

There is no such variable that is defined as:
var x = somthing, somesthingElse
You need to chose a variable that can store a collection of "things". In your case the Array is an ideal choice:
var x = [document.getElementById("div_name"),document.getElementById("div_name2")];
The brackets at the beginning and end of the expression are the syntax to declare a variable.

In addition to using Array, you can also store your divs in an Object
var divs = {
div1: document.getElementById("div_name"),
div2: document.getElementById("div_name2")
};
Thus, you could give a convenient name to your divs, but still pass them around as you please:
divs.div1;
divs.div2;
Or loop through them like so:
for (div in divs) {
console.log(divs[div]);
};

Setting properties on anonymous DOM elements through JavaScript?

Let's say I'm generating markup through server-side code. I'm generating a bunch of HTML tags but I want to add custom client-side behavior.
With JavaScript (if I had a reference to the DOM node) I could have written:
var myDOMNode = ...
myDOMNode.myCustomAttribute = "Hi!";
Now the issue here is that I don't want to qualify every element with an unique id just to initialize data. And it's really strange to me, that there's not an easier and unobtrusive way to attach client-side behavior.
If I'm remembing this correctly, this is valid IE stuff.
<div onload="this.myCustomAttribute='Hi!'"></div>
If I was able to do this, I should be able to access it's "data context" though the identifier 'myCustomAttribute', which is really what I want.

The following will work but not validate:
<div myattribute="myvalue"></div>
But if you are injecting it into the HTML with Javascript, then perhaps that's not concern for you. Otherwise, you can use something like jQuery to process the elements before adding them to the DOM:
$(elements).each(function(){
$(this).attr('myattribute','myvalue');
});

First off you should access custom attributes using the getAttribute and setAttribute methods if you want your code to work on other browsers than IE.
As to your event handler question that really depends on how you add the event handler.
Assigning a function directly to the elements onXXXX property would allow you access the the element via this.
If you use IE's attachEvent you can't use this, you can access the element that generated the event using event.srcElementbut that may be child element of the div. Hence you will need to test for the existance of myCustomAttribute and search up the ancestors until you find it.

I do appricate the input but I've finally figured this out and it's the way I go about initialization that has been the thorn in my side.
What you never wan't do is to pollute your global namespace with a bunch of short lived identifiers. Any time you put id="" on an element you're doing exactly that (same thing for any top level function). By relying on jQuery, HTML5 data and CSS there's a solution to my problem which I think is quite elegant.
What I do is that I reserve a CSS class for a specific behavior and then use HTML5 data to parameterize the behavior. When the document is ready, I query the document (using Query) for the CSS class that represents the behavior and initialize the client-side behavior.
I've been doing a lot of ASP.NET and within this context both the id="" and name="" belongs to ASP.NET and is pretty useless for anything else than internal ASP.NET stuff. What you typically find yourself doing is to get at a server-side property called ClientID you can refer to this from client-side JavaScript, it's a lot of hassle. They made it easier in 4.0 but fundamentally I think it's pretty much broken.
Using this hybrid of CSS, HTML5 data and jQuery solves this problem altogether. Here's an example of an attached behavior that uses regular expressions to validate the input of a textbox.
<input type="text" class="-input-regex" data-regex="^[a-z]+$" />
And here's the script:
$(function () {
function checkRegex(inp) {
if (inp.data("regex").test(inp.val()))
inp.data("good-value", inp.val());
else
inp.val(inp.data("good-value"));
}
$(".-input-regex")
.each(function () {
// starting with jQuery 1.5
// you can get at HTML5 data like this
var inp = $(this);
var pattern = inp.data("regex");
inp.data("regex", new RegExp(pattern));
checkRegex(inp);
})
.keyup(function (e) {
checkRegex($(this));
})
.change(function (e) {
checkRegex($(this));
})
.bind("paste", undefined, function (e) {
checkRegex($(this));
})
;
});
Totally clean, no funky id="" or obtrusive dependency.

In HTML5 there are HTML5 data attributes introduced exactly for the case.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<div data-my-custom-attribute='Hi!'></div>
is now corect, validating html. You can use any name starting with data- in any quantity.
There is jQuery .data method for interaction with them. Use .data( key ) to get, .data(key, value) to set data-key attribute. For example,
$('div').each(function () {
$(this).html($(this).data('myCustomAttribute')).data('processed', 'OK');
});

How about this?
<script>
function LoadElement(myDiv)
{
alert(this.myCustomAttribute);
}
</script>
<div onload="LoadElement(this)"></div>
not tested btw

Since you're trying to do this for multiple elements, you may try name attributes and getElementsByName.
<div name="handleonload">...</div>
window.onload = function () {
var divs = document.getElementsByName('handleonload');
for (var i = 0; i < divs.length; i += 1) {
divs[i].foo = 'bar';
}
};
Alternatively, you can use selectors, using libraries (such as jQuery and Prototype) and their respective iterators. This will also allow for you to search by other attributes (such as class).
Though, be cautious with your terminology:
obj.property = value;
<tag attribute="value">

<div style="width:100px;height:100px;border:solid black 1px" myCustomAttribute='Hi!' onclick="alert(myCustomAttribute);"></div>

The onload event is used for server side events. Its not part of the standard html element events.

Take a look at the following functions (especially the walk_the_dom one):
// walk_the_DOM visits every node of the tree in HTML source order, starting
// from some given node. It invokes a function,
// passing it each node in turn. walk_the_DOM calls
// itself to process each of the child nodes.
var walk_the_DOM = function walk(node, func) {
func(node);
node = node.firstChild;
while (node) {
walk(node, func);
node = node.nextSibling;
}
};
// getElementsByAttribute takes an attribute name string and an optional
// matching value. It calls walk_the_DOM, passing it a
// function that looks for an attribute name in the
// node. The matching nodes are accumulated in a
// results array.
var getElementsByAttribute = function (att, value) {
var results = [];
walk_the_DOM(document.body, function (node) {
var actual = node.nodeType === 1 && node.getAttribute(att);
if (typeof actual === 'string' &&
(actual === value || typeof value !== 'string')) {
results.push(node);
}
});
return results;
};
With the above two functions at hand, now we can do something like this:
some link
<script>
var els = getElementsByAttribute('dreas');
if (els.length > 0) {
els[0].innerHTML = 'changed text';
}
</script>
Notice how now I am making finding that particular element (which has an attribute called dreas) without using an id or a class name...or even a tag name

Looks like jQuery is the best bet for this one based on my searching. You can bind an object to a DOM node by:
var domNode = ...
var myObject = { ... }
$(domNode).data('mydata', mymyObj);
then you can call the data back up the same way, using your key.
var myObect = $(domNode).data('mydata');
I assume you could also store a reference to this within this object, but that may be more info then you really want. Hope I could help.

Unique element ID, even if element doesn't have one

I'm writing a GreaseMonkey script where I'm iterating through a bunch of elements. For each element, I need a string ID that I can use to reference that element later. The element itself doesn't have an id attribute, and I can't modify the original document to give it one (although I can make DOM changes in my script). I can't store the references in my script because when I need them, the GreaseMonkey script itself will have gone out of scope. Is there some way to get at an "internal" ID that the browser uses, for example? A Firefox-only solution is fine; a cross-browser solution that could be applied in other scenarios would be awesome.
Edit:
If the GreaseMonkey script is out of scope, how are you referencing the elements later? They GreaseMonkey script is adding events to DOM objects. I can't store the references in an array or some other similar mechanism because when the event fires, the array will be gone because the GreaseMonkey script will have gone out of scope. So the event needs some way to know about the element reference that the script had when the event was attached. And the element in question is not the one to which it is attached.
Can't you just use a custom property on the element? Yes, but the problem is on the lookup. I'd have to resort to iterating through all the elements looking for the one that has that custom property set to the desired id. That would work, sure, but in large documents it could be very time consuming. I'm looking for something where the browser can do the lookup grunt work.
Wait, can you or can you not modify the document? I can't modify the source document, but I can make DOM changes in the script. I'll clarify in the question.
Can you not use closures? Closuses did turn out to work, although I initially thought they wouldn't. See my later post.
It sounds like the answer to the question: "Is there some internal browser ID I could use?" is "No."

The answer is no, there isn't an internal id you can access. Opera and IE (maybe Safari?) support .sourceIndex (which changes if DOM does) but Firefox has nothing of this sort.
You can simulate source-index by generating Xpath to a given node or finding the index of the node from document.getElementsByTagName('*') which will always return elements in source order.
All of this requires a completely static file of course. Changes to DOM will break the lookup.
What I don't understand is how you can loose references to nodes but not to (theoretical) internal id's? Either closures and assignments work or they don't. Or am I missing something?

Closure is the way to go. This way you'll have exact reference to the element that even will survive some shuffling of DOM.
Example for those who don't know closures:
var saved_element = findThatDOMNode();
document.body.onclick = function()
{
alert(saved_element); // it's still there!
}
If you had to store it in a cookie, then I recommend computing XPath for it (e.g. walk up the DOM counting previous siblings until you find element with an ID and you'll end up with something like [#id=foo]/div[4]/p[2]/a).
XPointer is W3C's solution to that problem.

A bit confused by the wording of your question - you say that you "need a string ID that [you] can use to reference that element later, " but that you "can't store the references in [your] script because when [you] need them, the GreaseMonkey script itself will have gone out of scope."
If the script will have gone out of scope, then how are you referencing them later?!
I am going to ignore the fact that I am confused by what you are getting at and tell you that I write Greasemonkey scripts quite often and can modify the DOM elements I access to give them an ID property. This is code you can use to get a pseudo-unique value for temporary use:
var PseudoGuid = new (function() {
this.empty = "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000";
this.GetNew = function() {
var fourChars = function() {
return (((1 + Math.random()) * 0x10000)|0).toString(16).substring(1).toUpperCase();
}
return (fourChars() + fourChars() + "-" + fourChars() + "-" + fourChars() + "-" + fourChars() + "-" + fourChars() + fourChars() + fourChars());
};
})();
// usage example:
var tempId = PseudoGuid.GetNew();
someDomElement.id = tempId;
That works for me, I just tested it in a Greasemonkey script myself.
UPDATE: Closures are the way to go - personally, as a hard-core JavaScript developer, I don't know how you didn't think of those immediately. :)
myDomElement; // some DOM element we want later reference to
someOtherDomElement.addEventListener("click", function(e) {
// because of the closure, here we have a reference to myDomElement
doSomething(myDomElement);
}, false);
Now, myDomElement is one of the elements you apparently, from your description, already have around (since you were thinking of adding an ID to it, or whatever).
Maybe if you post an example of what you are trying to do, it would be easier to help you, assuming this doesn't.

UPDATE: Closures are indeed the answer. So after fiddling with it some more, I figured out why closures were initially problematic and how to fix it. The tricky thing with a closure is you have to be careful when iterating through the elements not to end up with all of your closures referencing the same element. For example, this doesn't work:
for (var i = 0; i < elements.length; i++) {
var element = elements[i];
var button = document.createElement("button");
button.addEventListener("click", function(ev) {
// do something with element here
}, false)
}
But this does:
var buildListener = function(element) {
return function(ev) {
// do something with event here
};
};
for (var i = 0; i < elements.length; i++) {
var element = elements[i];
var button = document.createElement("button");
button.addEventListener("click", buildListener(element), false)
}
Anyway, I decided not to select one answer because the question had two answers: 1) No, there are no internal IDs you can use; 2) you should use closures for this. So I simply upvoted the first people to say whether there were internal IDs or who recommended generating IDs, plus anyone who mentioned closures. Thanks for the help!

If you can write to the DOM (I'm sure you can). I would solve this like this:
Have a function return or generate an ID:
//(function () {
var idCounter = new Date().getTime();
function getId( node ) {
return (node.id) ? node.id : (node.id = 'tempIdPrefix_' + idCounter++ );
}
//})();
Use this to get ID's as needed:
var n = document.getElementById('someid');
getId(n); // returns "someid"
var n = document.getElementsByTagName('div')[1];
getId(n); // returns "tempIdPrefix_1224697942198"
This way you don't need to worry about what the HTML looks like when the server hands it to you.

If you're not modifying the DOM you can get them all by indexed order:
(Prototype example)
myNodes = document.body.descendants()
alert(document.body.descendants()[1].innerHTML)
You could loop through all of the nodes and give them a unique className that you could later select easily.

You can set the id attribute to a computed value. There is a function in the prototype library that can do this for you.
http://www.prototypejs.org/api/element/identify
My favorite javascript library is jQuery. Unfortunately jQuery does not have a function like identify. However, you can still set the id attribute to a value that you generate on your own.
http://docs.jquery.com/Attributes/attr#keyfn
Here is a partial snippet from jQuery docs that sets id for divs based on the position in the page:
$(document).ready(function(){
$("div").attr("id", function (arr) {
return "div-id" + arr;
});
});

You can generate a stable, unique identifier for any given node in a DOM with the following function:
function getUniqueKeyForNode (targetNode) {
const pieces = ['doc'];
let node = targetNode;
while (node && node.parentNode) {
pieces.push(Array.prototype.indexOf.call(node.parentNode.childNodes, node));
node = node.parentNode
}
return pieces.reverse().join('/');
}
This will create identifiers such as doc/0, doc/0/0, doc/0/1, doc/0/1/0, doc/0/1/1 for a structure like this one:
<div>
<div />
<div>
<div />
<div />
</div>
</div>
There are also a few optimisations and changes you can make, for example:
In the while loop, break when that node has an attribute you know to be unique, for example #id
Not reverse() the pieces, currently it is just there to look more like the DOM structure the ID's are generated from
Not include the first piece doc if you don't need an identifier for the document node
Save the identifier on the node in some way, and reuse that value for child nodes to avoid having to traverse all the way up the tree again.
If you're writing these identifiers back to XML, use another concatenation character if the attribute you're writing is restricted.

Use mouse and/or positional properties of the element to generate a unique ID.

In javascript, you could attach a custom ID field to the node
if(node.id) {
node.myId = node.id;
} else {
node.myId = createId();
}
// store myId
It's a bit of hack, but it'll give each and every node an id you can use. Of course, document.getElementById() won't pay attention to it.

You can also use pguid (page-unique identifier) for unique identifier generation:
pguid = b9j.pguid.next() // A unique id (suitable for a DOM element)
// is generated
// Something like "b9j-pguid-20a9ff-0"
...
pguid = b9j.pguid.next() // Another unique one... "b9j-pguid-20a9ff-1"
// Build a custom generator
var sequence = new b9j.pguid.Sequence({ namespace: "frobozz" })
pguid = sequence.next() "frobozz-c861e1-0"
http://appengine.bravo9.com/b9j/documentation/pguid.html

I 'think' I've just solved a problem similar to this. However, I'm using jQuery in a browser DOM environment.
var objA = $("selector to some dom element");
var objB = $("selector to some other dom element");
if( objA[0] === objB[0]) {
//GREAT! the two objects point to exactly the same dom node
}

OK, there is no ID associated to DOM element automatically.
DOM has a hierarchycal structure of elements which is the main information.
From this perspective, you can associate data to DOM elements with jQuery or jQLite. It can solve some issues when you have to bind custom data to elements.