The "uniqueName" binding

Purpose

The uniqueName binding ensures that the associated DOM element has a nonempty name attribute. If the DOM element did not have a name attribute, this binding gives it one and sets it to some unique string value.

You won’t need to use this often. It’s only useful in a few rare cases, e.g.:

• Other technologies may depend on the assumption that certain elements have names, even though names might be irrelevant when you’re using KO. For example, jQuery Validation currently will only validate elements that have names. To use this with a Knockout UI, it’s sometimes necessary to apply the uniqueName binding to avoid confusing jQuery Validation. See an example of using jQuery Validation with KO.

• IE 6 does not allow radio buttons to be checked if they don’t have a name attribute. Most of the time this is irrelevant because your radio button elements will have name attributes to put them into mutually-exclusive groups. However, just in case you didn’t add a name attribute because it’s unnecessary in your case, KO will internally use uniqueName on those elements to ensure they can be checked.

Example

<input data-bind="value: someModelProperty, uniqueName: true" />

Parameters

• Main parameter

  Pass true (or some value that evaluates as true) to enable the uniqueName binding, as in the preceding example.

• Additional parameters

  • None

Dependencies

None, other than the core Knockout library.