How to convert data attribute value to integer for in javascript?

Question

I've been searching everywhere for this and can't seem to find an anwser that works. What i have is a slider with arrows and buttons, when an arrow or button is clicked the function grabs the data-cs attribute which it uses to to determine the next slide.

the html

<div id="arrowleft" class="sliderbtns flip" data-sc="prev"></div>
<div id="arrowright" class="sliderbtns" data-sc="next"></div>
<div id="buttons" class="sliderbtns">
<div class="selectedbtn sliderbtns" id="button1" data-sc="1"></div> 
<div class="button sliderbtns" data-sc="2"></div> 
</div>

the javascript

$( ".sliderbtns" ).click(function() {
    var button_data = $(this).attr('data-sc');
    myslider(button_data);
});

the function in js

function myslider(position) {
    if (position == "next" && (currentslide == slidecount)) {
        position = 1;
    } else if (position == "next") {
        position = currentslide + 1; 
    } else if ((position == "prev") && (currentslide == 1)){
        position = slidecount;
    } else if ((position == "prev")) {
        position = position - 1;
    } else { 
        // position must then eqauls some integer from the data-sc attribute
        position =  parseInt(position);
        alert (position); // alerts properly the first time
        var out_slide = "Slide" + currentslide + "Out"; 
        var next_slide = "Slide" + position;
        alert(out_slide); //these work fine the first time 
        alert(next_slide);
        window[next_slide]();        
        window[out_slide]();
        // later on in the slide currentslide becomes position after this it returns value of Nan
        setTimeout( function() {
            currentslide = position;
            alert("this is the current slide position" + currentslide);
        }, 2000);
    /* ommited code */
    }
 }

The arrows work fine if I just click on the arrows but when I click on a button it proprly goes to the next slide but none of the buttons no longer work and display current position as NaN, I have tried making the position variable an int in a bunch of different ways with Number(position), ToInt and ParseInt, but still after currentslide = position it returns it as Nan and the slider can no longer find the proper slides and functions etc... If any one has any idea what I could be doing wrong, how to properly make sure it's an actuall integer if that's posssible from a data attribute, or maybe some other way around I can throw that data around as and int that could be gotten by clicking the arrows or buttons. Greatly appreciate any help!

Answer 1

To get data use .data():

 $(this).data('sc')