What s the difference between an id and a class

Question

What s the difference between  lt div class    gt  and  lt div id    gt  when it comes to CSS  Is it alright to use  lt div id    gt    I see different developers doing this in both ways  and since I m self taught  I ve never really figured it out

User · Answer

id and class are two Global   Standard HTML attribute  The global attributes below can be used on any HTML element     class Specifies one or more classnames for an element  refers to a class in a style sheet   id    Specifies a unique id for an element  The id attributes gives an element document-wide unique identifier where the class attribute provides a way of classifying similar elements   The id attribute value must be unique across the HTML page where class attribute can be reused where ever you want to apply the same properties

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A CLASS should be used for multiple elements that you want the same styling for   An ID should be for a unique element    See this tutorial   You should refer to the W3C standards if you want to be a strict conformist  or if you want your pages to be validated to the standards

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An id must be unique in the whole page   A class may apply to many elements   Sometimes  it s a good idea to use ids   In a page  you usually have one footer  one header     Then the footer may be into a div with an id      lt div id  footer  class       gt    and still have a class

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Class is for applying your style to a group of elements   ID styles apply to just the element with that ID  there should only be one    Usually you use classes  but if there s a one-off you can use IDs  or just stick the style straight into the element

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When applying CSS  apply it to a class and try to avoid as much as you can to an id  The ID should only be used in JavaScript to fetch the element or for any event binding   Classes should be used to apply CSS    Sometimes you do have to use classes for event binding  In such cases  try to avoid classes which are being used for applying CSS and rather add new classes which doesn t have corresponding CSS  This will come to help when you need to change the CSS for any class or change the CSS class name all together for any element

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1  div id is not reusable and should only be applied to one element of HTML while div class can be added to multiple elements   2  An id has greater importance if both are applied to the same element and have conflicting styles  the styles of the id will be applied     3  Style element always refer a div class by putting a    dot  in front of their names while div id class is referred by putting a    hash  in front of their names   4  Example  -     class in  lt style gt  declaration -  red-background   background-color  red         id in  lt style gt  declaration -     blue-background  background-color  blue         lt div class  red-background  id  blue-background  gt Hello lt  div gt    Here background will be in blue color

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In advanced development ids we can basically use JavaScript   For repeatable purposes  classes come handy contrary to ids which supposed to be unique   Below is an example illustrating the expressions above    lt div id  box  class  box bg-color-red  gt this is a box lt  div gt   lt div id  box1  class  box bg-color-red  gt this is a box lt  div gt    Now you can see in here box and box1 are two  2  different  lt div gt  elements  but we can apply the box and bg-color-red classes to both of them   The concept is inheritance in an OOP language

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CSS is object oriented  ID says instance  class says class

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Perhaps an analogy will help understanding the difference    lt student id  JonathanSampson  class  Biology Calculus    gt   lt student id  MarySmith  class  Biology Networking    gt    Student ID cards are distinct  No two students on campus will have the same student ID card  However  many students can and will share at least one Class with each other   It s okay to put multiple students under one Class title  such as Biology  But it s never acceptable to put multiple students under one student ID   When giving Rules over the school intercom system  you can give Rules to a Class       Tomorrow  all students are to wear a red shirt to Biology class        Biology     color  red      Or you can give rules to a Specific Student  by calling his unique ID       Jonathan Sampson is to wear a green shirt tomorrow      JonathanSampson     color  green      In this case  Jonathan Sampson is receiving two commands  one as a student in the Biology class  and another as a direct requirement  Because Jonathan was told directly  via the id attribute  to wear a green shirt  he will disregard the earlier request to wear a red shirt   The more specific selectors win

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Classes are like categories  Many HTML elements can belong to a class  and an HTML element can have more than one class  Classes are used to apply general styles or styles that can be applied across multiple HTML elements   IDs are identifiers  They re unique  no one else is allowed to have that same ID  IDs are used to apply unique styles to an HTML element   I use IDs and classes in this fashion    lt div id  header  gt     lt h1 gt I am a header  lt  h1 gt     lt p gt I am subtext for a header  lt  p gt   lt  div gt   lt div id  content  gt     lt div class  section  gt       lt p gt I am a section  lt  p gt     lt  div gt     lt div class  section special  gt       lt p gt I am a section  lt  p gt     lt  div gt     lt div class  section  gt       lt p gt I am a section  lt  p gt     lt  div gt   lt  div gt    In this example  the header and content sections can be styled via  header and  content  Each section of the content can be applied a common style through  content  section  Just for kicks  I added a  special  class for the middle section  Suppose you wanted a particular section to have a special styling  This can be achieved with the  special class  yet the section still inherits the common styles from  content  section   When I do JavaScript or CSS development  I typically use IDs to access manipulate a very specific HTML element  and I use classes to access apply styles to a broad range of elements

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IDs are unique   Classes aren t   Elements can also have multiple classes   Also classes can be dynamically added and removed to an element   Anywhere you can use an ID you could use a class instead   The reverse is not true   The convention seems to be to use IDs for page elements that are on every page  like  navbar  or  menu   and classes for everything else but this is only convention and you ll find wide variance in usage   One other difference is that for form input elements  the  lt label gt  element references a field by ID so you need to use IDs if you re going to use  lt label gt     is an accessibility thing and you really should use it   In years gone by IDs were also preferred because they re easily accessible in Javascript  getElementById   With the advent of jQuery and other Javascript frameworks this is pretty much a non-issue now

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Class is used for multiple elements which have common attributes Example if you want same color and font for both p and body tag use class attribute or in a division itself   Id on the other hand is used for highlighting a single element attributes and used exclusively for a particular element only For example we have an h1 tag with some attributes we would not want them to repeat in any other elements throughout the page   It should be noted that if we use class and id both in an element  id ovverides the class attributes  Simply because id is exclusively for a single element  Refer the below example   lt html gt   lt head gt   lt style gt       html id          color aqua          background-color  black              html class          color burlywood          background-color  brown         lt  style gt       lt  head gt       lt body gt   lt p  class  html class  gt Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur adipisicing     elit       Perspiciatis a dicta qui unde veritatis cupiditate ullam quibusdam        Mollitia enim       nulla totam deserunt ex nihil quod  eaque  sed facilis quos iste  lt  p gt       lt  body gt      lt  html gt    We generate the output  Output

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ids must be unique where as class can be applied to many things  In CSS  ids look like  elementID and class elements look like  someClass  In general  use id whenever you want to refer to a specific element and class when you have a number of things that are all alike  For instance  common id elements are things like header  footer  sidebar  Common class elements are things like highlight or external-link   It s a good idea to read up on the cascade and understand the precedence assigned to various selectors  http   www w3 org TR CSS2 cascade html  The most basic precedence you should understand  however  is that id selectors take precedence over class selectors  If you had this    lt p id  intro  class  foo  gt Hello  lt  p gt    and    intro   color  red    foo   color  blue     The text would be red because the id selector takes precedence over the class selector

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In the CSS  a class selector is a name preceded by a full stop           and an ID selector is a name preceded by a hash character            The difference between an ID and a class is that an ID can be used to identify one element  whereas a class can be used to identify more than one

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Where to use an ID versus a class  The simple difference between the two is that while a class can be used repeatedly on a page  an ID must only be used once per page  Therefore  it is appropriate to use an ID on the div element that is marking up the main content on the page  as there will only be one main content section  In contrast  you must use a class to set up alternating row colors on a table  as they are by definition going to be used more than once   IDs are an incredibly powerful tool  An element with an ID can be the target of a piece of JavaScript that manipulates the element or its contents in some way  The ID attribute can be used as the target of an internal link  replacing anchor tags with name attributes  Finally  if you make your IDs clear and logical  they can serve as a sort of    self documentation    within the document  For example  you do not necessarily need to add a comment before a block stating that a block of code will contain the main content if the opening tag of the block has an ID of  say   main    header    footer   etc

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Any element can have a class or an id   A class is used to reference a certain type of display  for example you may have a css class for a div that represents the answer to this question  As there will be many answers  multiple divs would need the same styling and you would use a class   An id refers to only a single element  for example the related section at the right may have styling specific to it not reused elsewhere  it would use an id   Technically you can use classes for all of it  or split them up logically  You can not  however  reuse id s for multiple elements

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CSS selector space actually allows for conditional id style   h1 my-id  color red  p my-id  color blue    will render as expected  Why would you do this  Sometimes IDs are generated dynamically  etc  A further use has been to render titles differently based on a high-level ID assignment   body list-page  title  font-size 56px  body detail-page  title  font-size 24px    Personally  I prefer longer classname selectors   body list-page  title-block  gt  h1  font-size 56px    as I find using nested IDs to differentiate treatment to be a bit perverse  Just know that as developers in the Sass SCSS world get their hands on this stuff  nested IDs are becoming the norm   Finally  when it comes to selector performance and precedence  ID tends to win out  This is a whole other subject

[html] What's the difference between an id and a class?

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