Need help with a function

Question

I want to make a function that will handle focus for multiple forms. I'm certainly doing something wrong here because it isn't working as expected. Can someone tell me what's wrong?

<a href="#" onclick="x('a','b','')">test</a>
<script type="text/javascript">
function x(xform, xbox, xval) {
 document.xform.xbox.focus();
}
</script>
<input type="text" id="b" name="b" />

• jim: I just tried that but still nothing. Good catch though!
• kennytm: Where is the <form>? What do you mean by .focus('c')?
• jim: Kenny, the focus('c') is a typo. I had alert in there and then tried focus. I'll edit my question. The form is below my input and is named a
• Felix Kling: The input must be in the form, otherwise it does not work in any way.

Answer 1

Not sure why you need the third value (focus does not take any parameter), but it should look like this:

document[xform][xbox].focus();

DEMO

Explanation: document.xform will access the xform property of document. But document[xform] will access the property taken from the value of xform.

• jim: Felix, I'm still having a problem with passing in a value. Is there something special I must do?
• Felix Kling: @jim: I don't know what you mean, do you want to set a value for the input field?
• jim: Yes, exactly then focus it after the value has been set.
• jim: I thought I could could just follow the focus example but it doesn't work.
• Felix Kling: @jim: It depends what kind of form elements you are dealing with. For an input element, you do element.value = newValue, so you could do document[xform][xbox].value = xval

Answer 2

You can use bracket notation as Felix has...however IDs should be unique in a page, so just this would work:

function x(id) {
 document.getElementById(id).focus();
}

Then in your code use the id that your <input> already has:

<a href="#" onclick="x('b')">test</a>

• jim: Thank you, Nick. I will make the adjustments and this is also good to know.