Cross reference custom ID

Question

I have a table of requirements that have an ID associated with each one, I'm doing this via:

\stepcounter{functionalrequirements}FR\arabic{functionalrequirements}

I'm wondering if there is a way to do for example something like:

\stepcounter{functionalrequirements}FR\arabic{functionalrequirements}\label{requirement-user-interface}

and then reference like:

As seen in requirement \ref{requirement-user-interface}

You probably want \ref{..} to return FR<num>, correct? Or should it just return <num>? — Werner, Jan 28 '16 at 22:46
Related question and answer (perhaps more complex than what you need): http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/255938/multiple-handcrafted-labels-for-figure — Ethan Bolker, Jan 29 '16 at 00:23

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 28 '16 at 23:22

Perhaps the following template might suit your needs:

\documentclass{article}
\newcounter{functionalrequirement}
\renewcommand{\thefunctionalrequirement}{FR\arabic{functionalrequirement}}
\newcommand{\newFR}{%
  \refstepcounter{functionalrequirement}%
  \thefunctionalrequirement}

\usepackage{lipsum}% Just for this example
\usepackage{booktabs}
\begin{document}

\lipsum[1]

See, for example,~\ref{fr:first} and~\ref{fr:second} below:
\begin{center}
  \begin{tabular}{ll}
    \toprule
    Reference & Description \\
    \midrule
    \newFR\label{fr:first}  & First \\
    \newFR\label{fr:second} & Second \\
    \bottomrule
  \end{tabular}
\end{center}

\lipsum[2]

\end{document}

Principally you want to use \refstepcounter{<cntr>} to increment the counter. This internally does a \stepcounter{<cntr>}, but also updates LaTeX's referencing mechanism by \the<cntr>. You'll note that I've updated \the<cntr> above to prepend it with FR. You can remove this if you only want the reference to be the number.

Cross reference custom ID

1 Answers1