Tip of the Iceberg :: XPages safety tip - avoid using hyphens in control ID names

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XPages safety tip - avoid using hyphens in control ID names

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Never, EVER use a hyphen in a control ID (i.e. "repeat-SomeCollection").

Posted by Tim Tripcony On 11/05/2009 | Permalink

Comments

1 - And also make sure that you don't cross the streams! That's bad too! Emoticon

Posted by David Leedy At 07:36:16 PM On 11/05/2009 | - Website - |

2 - Sheesh. Could you please just cut to the point? Emoticon

Posted by Kathy Brown At 09:08:02 PM On 11/05/2009 | - Website - |

3 - For those who are a little dense (like me), could you explain why?

Posted by Charles Robinson At 10:43:26 PM On 11/05/2009 | - Website - |

4 - @3 - Actually, he can't. But I assure you that it's very good advice.

Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 11:14:32 PM On 11/05/2009 | - Website - |

5 - Admittedly, this particular bug probably won't be an issue after the next fixpack, so the "never, ever" part probably should have been "for the time being".

Posted by Tim Tripcony At 10:14:47 AM On 11/06/2009 | - Website - |

6 - Had to try it myself to see why and it reverted my servers back to version 5 :)

Posted by pops At 03:21:19 PM On 11/06/2009 | - Website - |

7 - Hyphens are bad in any kind of names. Not in variables, or anywhere. Its confusing to see hyphens in someone else's code and I can't see why someone would use it.

Use underscore instead.

Posted by . At 09:19:04 AM On 11/10/2009 | - Website - |

8 - @7 - That's precisely what I recommended to a colleague who came to me for advice after encountering an error message that was so not indicative of the root cause.

You might find it intriguing to know that both Google and Yahoo have HTML elements on their home page that contain a hyphen in the ID attribute. So, while I don't advise it, it does happen... this post was my attempt at a "public service announcement" in the hopes that it would spare others some avoidable confusion.

P.S. You forgot to enter your name... I nearly deleted your comment before I noticed it wasn't spam.

Posted by Tim Tripcony At 04:18:38 PM On 11/10/2009 | - Website - |