Is there a generic attribute for all HTML elements aside from ID and class?

Question

Like a tag that I can use to store some necessary info? But really isn’t required or used by the HTML? Works like the tag attribute for objects on Visual Basic?

Answer 1

Up until HTML5 no. With HTML 5 there is provision for this with the data-* attribute.

For example:-

<div id="myStuff" data-mydata="here is my data">

In current technology there is no "official" away to do this. However all browsers allow you to add any arbitary attribute to a HTML element so in HTML4 you can do this:-

<div id="myStuff" data-mydata="here is my data">

Which as you can see is identical but not offically sactioned and if you want strict XHMTL compliance will be considered "broken".

You can access the attribute just as you would any other:-

var mydata = document.getElementById("myStuff").getAttribute("data-mydata");

Answer 2

You could perhaps use the html5 data-* attributes? It'll fail validation on html4, but it is still probably the best option...