I'm not entirely sure I know what you're asking about, but you can use string functions to create the actual ID that you're looking for.
var base = "common";
var num = 3;
var o = document.getElementById(base + num); // will find id="common3"
If you don't know the actual ID, then you can't look up the object with getElementById, you'd have to find it some other way (by class name, by tag type, by attribute, by parent, by child, etc...).
Now that you've finally given us some of the HTML, you could use this plain JS to find all form elements that have an ID that starts with "poll-":
// get a list of all form objects that have the right type of ID
function findPollForms() {
var list = getElementsByTagName("form");
var results = [];
for (var i = 0; i < list.length; i++) {
var id = list[i].id;
if (id && id.search(/^poll-/) != -1) {
results.push(list[i]);
}
}
return(results);
}
// return the ID of the first form object that has the right type of ID
function findFirstPollFormID() {
var list = getElementsByTagName("form");
var results = [];
for (var i = 0; i < list.length; i++) {
var id = list[i].id;
if (id && id.search(/^poll-/) != -1) {
return(id);
}
}
return(null);
}