When to use setAttribute vs .attribute= in JavaScript?

Question

Has a best-practice around using setAttribute instead of the dot (.) attribute notation been developed?

E.g.:

myObj.setAttr         


        

Answer 1

You should always use the direct .attribute form (but see the quirksmode link below) if you want programmatic access in JavaScript. It should handle the different types of attributes (think "onload") correctly.

Use getAttribute/setAttribute when you wish to deal with the DOM as it is (e.g. literal text only). Different browsers confuse the two. See Quirks modes: attribute (in)compatibility.

Answer 2

"When to use setAttribute vs .attribute= in JavaScript?"

A general rule is to use .attribute and check if it works on the browser.

..If it works on the browser, you're good to go.

..If it doesn't, use .setAttribute(attribute, value) instead of .attribute for that attribute.

Rinse-repeat for all attributes.

Well, if you're lazy you can simply use .setAttribute. That should work fine on most browsers. (Though browsers that support .attribute can optimize it better than .setAttribute(attribute, value).)

Answer 3

None of the previous answers are complete and most contain misinformation.

There are three ways of accessing the attributes of a DOM Element in JavaScript. All three work reliably in modern browsers as long as you understand how to utilize them.

1. element.attributes

Elements have a property attributes that returns a live NamedNodeMap of Attr objects. The indexes of this collection may be different among browsers. So, the order is not guaranteed. NamedNodeMap has methods for adding and removing attributes (getNamedItem and setNamedItem, respectively).

Notice that though XML is explicitly case sensitive, the DOM spec calls for string names to be normalized, so names passed to getNamedItem are effectively case insensitive.

Example Usage:

var div = document.getElementsByTagName('div')[0];

//you can look up specific attributes
var classAttr = div.attributes.getNamedItem('CLASS');
document.write('attributes.getNamedItem() Name: ' + classAttr.name + ' Value: ' + classAttr.value + '<br>');

//you can enumerate all defined attributes
for(var i = 0; i < div.attributes.length; i++) {
  var attr = div.attributes[i];
  document.write('attributes[] Name: ' + attr.name + ' Value: ' + attr.value + '<br>');
}

//create custom attribute
var customAttr = document.createAttribute('customTest');
customAttr.value = '567';
div.attributes.setNamedItem(customAttr);

//retreive custom attribute
customAttr = div.attributes.getNamedItem('customTest');
document.write('attributes.getNamedItem() Name: ' + customAttr.name + ' Value: ' + customAttr.value + '<br>');

<div class="class1" id="main" data-test="stuff" nonStandard="1234"></div>

2. element.getAttribute & element.setAttribute

These methods exist directly on the Element without needing to access attributes and its methods but perform the same functions.

Again, notice that string name are case insensitive.

Example Usage:

var div = document.getElementsByTagName('div')[0];

//get specific attributes
document.write('Name: class Value: ' + div.getAttribute('class') + '<br>');
document.write('Name: ID Value: ' + div.getAttribute('ID') + '<br>');
document.write('Name: DATA-TEST Value: ' + div.getAttribute('DATA-TEST') + '<br>');
document.write('Name: nonStandard Value: ' + div.getAttribute('nonStandard') + '<br>');


//create custom attribute
div.setAttribute('customTest', '567');

//retreive custom attribute
document.write('Name: customTest Value: ' + div.getAttribute('customTest') + '<br>');

<div class="class1" id="main" data-test="stuff" nonStandard="1234"></div>

3. Properties on the DOM object, such as element.id

Many attributes can be accessed using convenient properties on the DOM object. Which attributes exist depends on the DOM node's type, not which attributes are defined in the HTML. The properties are defined somewhere in the prototype chain of DOM object in question. The specific properties defined will depend on the type of Element you are accessing. For example, className and id are defined on Element and exist on all DOM nodes that are elements (ie. not text or comment nodes). But value is more narrow. It's defined on HTMLInputElement and may not exist on other elements.

Notice that JavaScript properties are case sensitive. Although most properties will use lowercase, some are camelCase. So always check the spec to be sure.

This "chart" captures a portion of the prototype chain for these DOM objects. It's not even close to complete, but it captures the overall structure.

                      ____________Node___________
                      |               |         |
                   Element           Text   Comment
                   |     |
           HTMLElement   SVGElement
           |         |
HTMLInputElement   HTMLSpanElement

Example Usage:

var div = document.getElementsByTagName('div')[0];

//get specific attributes
document.write('Name: class Value: ' + div.className + '<br>');
document.write('Name: id Value: ' + div.id + '<br>');
document.write('Name: ID Value: ' + div.ID + '<br>'); //undefined
document.write('Name: data-test Value: ' + div.dataset.test + '<br>'); //.dataset is a special case
document.write('Name: nonStandard Value: ' + div.nonStandard + '<br>'); //undefined

<div class="class1" id="main" data-test="stuff" nonStandard="1234"></div>

Caveat: This is an explanation of how the HTML spec defines and modern browsers handle attributes. I did not attempt to deal with limitations of ancient, broken browsers. If you need to support old browsers, in addition to this information, you will need to know what is broken in the those browsers.