How to add update an attribute to an HTML element using JavaScript

Question

I m trying to find a way that will add   update attribute using JavaScript   I know I can do it with setAttribute   function but that doesn t work in IE

User · Answer

What seems easy is actually tricky if you want to be completely compatible.

var e = document.createElement('div');

Let's say you have an id of 'div1' to add.

e['id'] = 'div1';
e.id = 'div1';
e.attributes['id'] = 'div1';
e.createAttribute('id','div1')

These will all work except the last in IE 5.5 (which is ancient history at this point but still is XP's default with no updates).

But there are contingencies, of course. Will not work in IE prior to 8:e.attributes['style'] Will not error but won't actually set the class, it must be className:e['class'] .
However, if you're using attributes then this WILL work:e.attributes['class']

In summary, think of attributes as literal and object-oriented.

In literal, you just want it to spit out x='y' and not think about it. This is what attributes, setAttribute, createAttribute is for (except for IE's style exception). But because these are really objects things can get confused.

Since you are going to the trouble of properly creating a DOM element instead of jQuery innerHTML slop, I would treat it like one and stick with the e.className = 'fooClass' and e.id = 'fooID'. This is a design preference, but in this instance trying to treat is as anything other than an object works against you.

It will never backfire on you like the other methods might, just be aware of class being className and style being an object so it's style.width not style="width:50px". Also remember tagName but this is already set by createElement so you shouldn't need to worry about it.

This was longer than I wanted, but CSS manipulation in JS is tricky business.

User · Answer

What do you want to do with the attribute  Is it an html attribute or something of your own   Most of the time you can simply address it as a property  want to set a title on an element  element title    foo  will do it   For your own custom JS attributes the DOM is naturally extensible  aka expando true   the simple upshot of which is that you can do element myCustomFlag   foo and subsequently read it without issue

User · Answer

Obligatory jQuery solution   Finds and sets the title attribute to foo   Note this selects a single element since I m doing it by id  but you could easily set the same attribute on a collection by changing the selector       element   attr   title    foo

User · Answer

You can read here about the behaviour of attributes in many different browsers  including IE   element setAttribute   should do the trick  even in IE  Did you try it  If it doesn t work  then maybe element attributeName    value  might work

[javascript] How to add/update an attribute to an HTML element using JavaScript?

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