Can I use JavaScript to set the 'name' attribute?

Question

According to SitePoint (and my own experiments), the IE implementation of "setAttribute()" is buggy and unreliable.

Also according to SitePoint, the name attribute is read-only.

Is there another way I can set the name attributes on elements? I need this for use with radio buttons. If possible, I'd like a solution without jQuery, as I'm currently not using the library.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Sitepoint liesis talking about a different usage of ‘name’ (see Anthony's comment). It's not read-only, it's just there's a long-standing IE bug (up to v7) where setting ‘name’ on form fields is only partially effective. Radio buttons in particular don't accept it properly.

The Microsoft-endorsed solution, as detailed here is to use a horrific misfeature of IE's version of the createElement call to set attributes at the same time:

var radio= document.createElement('<input type="radio" name="test" value="a" />');

Probably a better way would simply be to use good old innerHTML, eg.:

var div= document.createElement('div');
div.innerHTML= '<input type="radio" name="test" value="a" />';
var radio= div.firstChild;