Uncaught Error: Syntax error, unrecognized expression: with double equal in selector ==

Question

I have office 365 id on message divs. such as

<div id="AQMkADAwATM0MDAAMS0wYWIxLTU1ADI4LTAwAi0wMAoALgAAA1IXzflHRQlLlY3LIdjzH3MBADg_s4AQY3NEqDFmBjvfdZIAAAIBDwAAAA==">Message Subject</div>

But when I call it in functions. It gives jquery-2.1.1.js:2 Uncaught Error: Syntax error, unrecognized expression:

This works on devtools console.

$('#AQMkADFGFGDFGDFGwYWIxLTU1ADI4LTAwAi0wMAoALgAAA1IXzflHRQlLlY3LIdjzH3MBADg_s4AQY3NEqDFmBjvfdZIAAAIBDwAAAA')

This does not work on devtools console. I want to fix this because office 365 messages ids usually have double equal in the end ==.

 $('#AQMkADFGFGDFGDFGwYWIxLTU1ADI4LTAwAi0wMAoALgAAA1IXzflHRQlLlY3LIdjzH3MBADg_s4AQY3NEqDFmBjvfdZIAAAIBDwAAAA==')

Try [escaping the character](https://stackoverflow.com/a/79022/1048572) — Bergi, Mar 14 '18 at 16:25
just a comment, if you're using the outdated HTML4, equals character is not allowed: https://www.w3.org/TR/html4/types.html#type-id — Ricardo Pontual, Mar 14 '18 at 16:26

BoltClock · Answer 1 · 2018-03-14T16:28:08.017

5

If the structure is not known to change, save yourself a headache and select by structure instead of ID.

If you must select by ID, either use an attribute selector:

$('[id="AQMkADFGFGDFGDFGwYWIxLTU1ADI4LTAwAi0wMAoALgAAA1IXzflHRQlLlY3LIdjzH3MBADg_s4AQY3NEqDFmBjvfdZIAAAIBDwAAAA=="]')

or escape the equals signs:

$('#AQMkADFGFGDFGDFGwYWIxLTU1ADI4LTAwAi0wMAoALgAAA1IXzflHRQlLlY3LIdjzH3MBADg_s4AQY3NEqDFmBjvfdZIAAAIBDwAAAA\\=\\=')

edited Mar 14 '18 at 16:28

answered Mar 14 '18 at 16:23

BoltClock

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@Cemal: I overlooked that on purpose because it's not the issue. – BoltClock Mar 14 '18 at 16:25
@BoltClock let me try this – Waqas Bukhary Mar 14 '18 at 16:26
Yes this works, thanks! I actually used Sphinx replace function since == were in middle too sometimes. – Waqas Bukhary Mar 14 '18 at 16:38

Sphinx · Accepted Answer · 2018-03-14T16:34:47.823

The root cause is jQuery uses CSS syntax for selecting elements.

You can use one regex expression to escape with double backslashes for an ID that has characters used in CSS notation.

console.log($("#"+"AQMkADAwATM0MDAAMS0wYWIxLTU1ADI4LTAwAi0wMAoALgAAA1IXzflHRQlLlY3LIdjzH3MBADg_s4AQY3NEqDFmBjvfdZIAAAIBDwAAAA==".replace( /(:|\.|\[|\]|,|=|@)/g, "\\$1" )).text())

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<div id="AQMkADAwATM0MDAAMS0wYWIxLTU1ADI4LTAwAi0wMAoALgAAA1IXzflHRQlLlY3LIdjzH3MBADg_s4AQY3NEqDFmBjvfdZIAAAIBDwAAAA==">Message Subject</div>

Uncaught Error: Syntax error, unrecognized expression: with double equal in selector ==

2 Answers2