[jquery] jquery data selector

I need to select elements based on values stored in an element's .data() object. At a minimum, I'd like to select top-level data properties using selectors, perhaps like this:

$('a').data("category","music");
$('a:data(category=music)');

Or perhaps the selector would be in regular attribute selector format:

$('a[category=music]');

Or in attribute format, but with a specifier to indicate it is in .data():

$('a[:category=music]');

I've found James Padolsey's implementation to look simple, yet good. The selector formats above mirror methods shown on that page. There is also this Sizzle patch.

For some reason, I recall reading a while back that jQuery 1.4 would include support for selectors on values in the jquery .data() object. However, now that I'm looking for it, I can't find it. Maybe it was just a feature request that I saw. Is there support for this and I'm just not seeing it?

Ideally, I'd like to support sub-properties in data() using dot notation. Like this:

$('a').data("user",{name: {first:"Tom",last:"Smith"},username: "tomsmith"});
$('a[:user.name.first=Tom]');

I also would like to support multiple data selectors, where only elements with ALL specified data selectors are found. The regular jquery multiple selector does an OR operation. For instance, $('a.big, a.small') selects a tags with either class big or small). I'm looking for an AND, perhaps like this:

$('a').data("artist",{id: 3281, name: "Madonna"});
$('a').data("category","music");
$('a[:category=music && :artist.name=Madonna]');

Lastly, it would be great if comparison operators and regex features were available on data selectors. So $(a[:artist.id>5000]) would be possible. I realize I could probably do much of this using filter(), but it would be nice to have a simple selector format.

What solutions are available to do this? Is Jame's Padolsey's the best solution at this time? My concern is primarily in regards to performance, but also in the extra features like sub-property dot-notation and multiple data selectors. Are there other implementations that support these things or are better in some way?

If you also use jQueryUI, you get a (simple) version of the :data selector with it that checks for the presence of a data item, so you can do something like $("div:data(view)"), or $( this ).closest(":data(view)").

See http://api.jqueryui.com/data-selector/ . I don't know for how long they've had it, but it's there now!

There's a :data() filter plugin that does just this :)

Some examples based on your question:

$('a:data("category=music")')
$('a:data("user.name.first=Tom")');
$('a:data("category=music"):data("artist.name=Madonna")');
//jQuery supports multiple of any selector to restrict further, 
//just chain with no space in-between for this effect

The performance isn't going to be extremely great compared to what's possible, selecting from $._cache and grabbing the corresponding elements is by far the fastest, but a lot more round-about and not very "jQuery-ey" in terms of how you get to stuff (you usually come in from the element side). Of th top of my head, I'm not sure this is fastest anyway since the process of going from unique Id to element is convoluted in itself, in terms of performance.

The comparison selector you mentioned will be best to do in a .filter(), there's no built-in support for this in the plugin, though you could add it in without a lot of trouble.

I want to warn you that $('a[data-attribute=true]') doesn't work, as per Ashley's reply, if you attached data to a DOM element via the data() function.

It works as you'd expect if you added an actual data-attr in your HTML, but jQuery stores the data in memory, so the results you'd get from $('a[data-attribute=true]') would not be correct.

You'll need to use the data plugin http://code.google.com/p/jquerypluginsblog/, use Dmitri's filter solution, or do a $.each over all the elements and check .data() iteratively

You can set a data-* attribute on an elm using attr(), and then select using that attribute:

var elm = $('a').attr('data-test',123); //assign 123 using attr()
elm = $("a[data-test=123]"); //select elm using attribute

and now for that elm, both attr() and data() will yield 123:

console.log(elm.attr('data-test')); //123
console.log(elm.data('test')); //123

However, if you modify the value to be 456 using attr(), data() will still be 123:

elm.attr('data-test',456); //modify to 456
elm = $("a[data-test=456]"); //reselect elm using new 456 attribute

console.log(elm.attr('data-test')); //456
console.log(elm.data('test')); //123

So as I understand it, seems like you probably should steer clear of intermingling attr() and data() commands in your code if you don't have to. Because attr() seems to correspond directly with the DOM whereas data() interacts with the 'memory', though its initial value can be from the DOM. But the key point is that the two are not necessarily in sync at all.

So just be careful.

At any rate, if you aren't changing the data-* attribute in the DOM or in the memory, then you won't have a problem. Soon as you start modifying values is when potential problems can arise.

Thanks to @Clarence Liu to @Ash's answer, as well as this post.

You can also use a simple filtering function without any plugins. This is not exactly what you want but the result is the same:

$('a').data("user", {name: {first:"Tom",last:"Smith"},username: "tomsmith"});

$('a').filter(function() {
    return $(this).data('user') && $(this).data('user').name.first === "Tom";
});

At the moment I'm selecting like this:

$('a[data-attribute=true]')

Which seems to work just fine, but it would be nice if jQuery was able to select by that attribute without the 'data-' prefix.

I haven't tested this with data added to elements via jQuery dynamically, so that could be the downfall of this method.

$('a[data-category="music"]')

It works. See Attribute Equals Selector [name=”value”].

Here's a plugin that simplifies life https://github.com/rootical/jQueryDataSelector

Use it like that:

data selector           jQuery selector
  $$('name')              $('[data-name]')
  $$('name', 10)          $('[data-name=10]')
  $$('name', false)       $('[data-name=false]')
  $$('name', null)        $('[data-name]')
  $$('name', {})          Syntax error