Misc information HTML element attributes

Question

I've been using rel to store some non-html information, what other attributes are not commonly used that I can utilize to store information?

Answer 1

You might want to switch to HTML5 and use custom data attributes.

Answer 2

You can make up your own attributes if you wish. It is probably not a good idea to put data into an attribute if by specification it should have something meaningful in there.

Answer 3

In the HTML 5 spec, you can use data-* attributes; they're guaranteed not to do anything with the browser and they'll work in older browsers, too.

In JavaScript, you can access it with the normal attribute properties:

var value = elem.getAttribute("data-foo")
elem.setAttribute("data-foo", "value")
elem.removeAttribute("data-foo")

With new browsers you can use elem.dataset, but you probably don't want to do that as older browsers won't support it.

var value = elem.dataset.foo;
elem.dataset.foo = "value";
elem.dataset.foo = null;

Answer 4

In HTML5 you can define your own data- attributes to store whatever you want.

Answer 5

This help? Scroll down to the rel section:

http://diveintohtml5.ep.io/semantics.html

Answer 6

HTML5 now supports storing information in data-* attributes but thats HTML5 and everyone isn't there yet. So a real world scenario...

If you don't have to worry about persisting across post backs you could map simple data objects as a JSON collection var and pull an object out of it based on a particular key. But that is a broad approach - more information on the overall goal would improve the feedback.

Answer 7

Depends on what kind of information you're looking to store and how are you planning on accessing it. I successfully used both the id and the class attributes to store and access database IDs for example, and even references for some database tables, which I then retrieved with jQuery to do some AJAX requests.

If you are NOT using HTML5, I would advise against using your own custom attributes. Otherwise, like people already suggested before me, have a look at the data- prefixed attributes.