How to sort javascript object array by element.name

Question

I am try to write some validation script using javascript and prototype.

What I want to do is to loop through all the elements of a form and validate each answer. My code works, BUT the array of DOM elements is unsorted. I would like to sort the elements by their ID.

Here is the my code, which works fine if I comment-out elem.sort(zelementsort);

function zelementsort(a,b) {
    if (a.name > b.name)
        return -1;
    else if (b.name > a.name)
        return 1;
    else 
        return 0;
}   

var elem = document.getElementById('myform').elements;
elem.sort(zelementsort);

for(var i = 0; i < elem.length; i++)
{
     alert("Name = " + elem[i].name);

}

I wonder if the problem might be that some of the elements do not have names. Anyone have another simpler way of sorting an array of DOM elements by their .name?

Answer 1

This should do it:

$$('#myForm *[name]').sortBy(function(el){ return el.name; });