Giving a widget my own id or class in Wordpress - wordpress

Question

I'm writing a Wordpress plugin with a widget. In my jQuery code i'd like to point to that widget, so I though giving it an HTML ID would be nice. (Edited, thanks for pointing out.)
After doing some searching on the internet (and the Codex) I know that I can give ID's to the widgets in the theme, but it's not what I was looking for. This method has flaws. Changing the theme may cause errors (of course, I know it has to be changed in the functions.php, but it's just meh). The other thing is that my widget got a number which may change without me knowing.
So to be 100% sure it works and will work in the future, can I give my widget my own ID?

Answer 1

I might not understand your question exactly and what "ID" do you mean ( widget ID , or actual HTML div ID - which are actually one and the same.. ) but If you have read the codex , the example for how to give an ID is given there ..
function __construct() {
parent::__construct(
'foo_widget', // Base ID
__('Widget Title', 'text_domain'), // Name
array( 'description' => __( 'A Foo Widget', 'text_domain' ), ) // Args
);
}
Another way to do the same ( and helpul if you are talking about HTML elements like divs - you can assign a class )
function My_Widget() {
function My_Widget() {
$widget_ops = array( 'classname' => 'example', 'description' => __('A widget that displays nothing ', 'example') );
$control_ops = array( 'width' => 300, 'height' => 350, 'id_base' => 'example-widget' );
$this->WP_Widget( 'example-widget', __('Example Widget', 'example'), $widget_ops, $control_ops );
}
Note that a numerator will be automatically added to your widget´s ID based on how many instances were initiated like :
foo_widget
foo_widget-2
foo_widget-3
etc ...
EDIT I - after comments
At any rate , IMHO it is a bad idea to hard-code a fixed ID in a widget for the simple reason that the preference for a widget from the developer point of view is to always allow support for multiple instances . Giving an an HTML ID anywhere on the widget will cause validation errors AND in the case of jQuery - also JS errors for the simple cause that if a user will have 2 widgets , it will also have a duplicated ID .
In other words - It is the exact opposite of your statement in the original question.
So to be 100% sure it works and will work in the future, can I give my
widget my own ID
Giving a fixed hard coded ID to your widget will in fact ensure that it will NOT work 100% of the time.
The preference is always to target such issues with a class ( or with something like div[id^="my_widget_id"] ) and let wordpress "do it´s thing" ( by auto incrementing IDs ).
For the exact same reason - a theme should always have the same structure in the register sidebar() function like so :
<?php $args = array(
'name' => __( 'Sidebar name', 'theme_text_domain' ),
'id' => 'unique-sidebar-id',
'description' => '',
'class' => '',
'before_widget' => '<li id="%1$s" class="widget %2$s">', // LOOK AT THIS LINE
'after_widget' => '</li>',
'before_title' => '<h2 class="widgettitle">',
'after_title' => '</h2>' ); ?>
This will permit the specific sidebar to auto increment the ID of the widgets in order to avoid the above mentioned problem .
From the codex :
before_widget - HTML to place before every widget(default: '') Note: uses sprintf for variable
substitution
All that being said, and if you are insisting of giving a hard-coded fixed ID somewhere there ( instead of a the methods described above ) you can always put that at a nested divor span INSIDE your widget´s HTML output, But I would think that if you have read attentively this answer - you will avoid it now.
Now,- since you have not included any code in your question ( which is always a bad practice here on SE ) there is little more I can do to help. If you encounter any problems targeting the widget without an ID - I suggest you to open a new question and maybe point a link at the comments here, so myself ( and others ) can help you with it ..