What should I use instead of the deprecated `onerror` attribute?

Question

On my images I'm setting the onerror attribute so that a placeholder is used in case the image is not available for some reason:

<img
    class="article-img"
    src="path-to-image.jpg"
    alt="some description"
    onerror="this.src='/images/fallback.png'"
>

Now, it looks like onerror has been deprecated, but I couldn't find any good source on what would be the suggested alternative way of handling the error (possibly in a similarly compact fashion).

It would be also interesting to know why it was deprecated.

Answer 1

According to MDN, it seems to be deprecated as an img tag attribute but not as a global event; GlobalEventHandlers.onerror is still valid, and seemingly, they haven't classified the tag attribute event as deprecated there (in that section) yet, they're still showing an img attribute example.

Reference: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/GlobalEventHandlers/onerror

So you can still use it, but just don't use it as a tag attribute, you can place it inside a script tag or a separate file.

By the way I've just tested an img tag with an onerror attribute on the w3c validator and it's not marking it as error neither as a warning.

Answer 2

I think that was a mistake.

WHATWG still mention onerror in their HTML living standard specification.

Also, onerror attribute on img elements is not included in their obsolete features list.