How to access custom fields in Javascript

Question

How to access custom fields in javascript?

I have Account with both standard and custom fields. I use the default Page Layout to display and edit any acc. It is necessary to populate some of fields in javascript, so I need access to each of them.

Standart Account fields have a readable ids, such as acc1, acc15, acc16 (see attachments). They are the same for each account.

But custom fields have unique ids, so I cant identify them in DOM (attachments)

What is the best to have access to custom fields on standard Account Page Layout? Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

In general there are a lot of solution for prepopulating fields on the standard layout page.

• The first and a very dirty solution is to get the field ID from the page code and save it to some custom setting to be able to access it from the javascript for example. The problem here is that ID's are all different and you will have to set up it manually (so-called LKID hack).
  Example: New page - Parent lookup pre-populated?
• Next possibility is to use Tooling API to find the field ID's. This solution is more clear and reliable for the production system
  • Example: New page - Parent lookup pre-populated?
  • Topic from Andrew: Querying Custom Object and Field IDs via Tooling API
  • Topic from Keith: Finding Visualforce field ids
  • Topic from Frank: Salesforce URL Hacking (Properly)
• Finally you can override a standard page layout with your own visualforce page and reproduce edit/save/create functionallity. Then you will get a full access to all fields you need to prepopulate. For me it is a better way to do things like field prepopulation.

As you can see there are some solutions for this problem. You decide what you are taking.

Answer 2

Without your code its really hard to suggest anything...

Depending on your requirement:

1. A simple Document.getElementByID may work
2. ActionFunction can also be used to invoke controller methods from JavaScript
3. You can also use @RemoteAction

For code example of these refer to my Blog post VISUALFORCE: PASSING VALUES FROM JAVASCRIPT TO CONTROLLER

Answer 3

The ID values rendered into Visualforce pages for custom fields are hard to get hold of and vary from org to org.

For purely client-side JavaScript I've resorted to basing the logic on the label text of a field. The data value is in a td of class dataCol and the label is in a td of class labelCol. So you can find the label and then find the data value input field in the peer td.

It is possible at some effort to get the field ID values using the tooling API (or some hacks) - see Querying Custom Object and Field IDs via Tooling API. So you could do this in your controller and then reference those field ID values in your Visualforce JavaScript logic.