jquery selector contains equals sign

Question

Question by John Buckwell

I am using a jQuery selector to check for characters in href:

var param = "something";
$("a[href*="+param+"]").css("color", "red");

This works fine until “something” contains an = sign. Eg:

var param = "xkey=123";
$("a[href*="+param+"]").css("color", "red");

then I get no result. Anyone know a solution?

Answer 1

It is behaving that way becuase, at the end it will translate to ambiguous selector i.e. $("a[href*=xkey=123]") which indeed is invalid.

Escape the equal sign with \ infront and wrap the parameter part with a quote

var param = "xkey\=123";
$("a[href*='"+param+"']").css("color", "red");