Selecting element by data attribute

Question

Is there an easy and straight-forward method to select elements based on their data attribute? For example, select all anchors that has data attribute named customerID which has value of 22.

I am kind of hesitant to use rel or other attributes to store such information, but I find it much harder to select an element based on what data is stored in it.

Answer 1

For people Googling and want more general rules about selecting with data-attributes:

$("[data-test]") will select any element that merely has the data attribute (no matter the value of the attribute). Including:

<div data-test=value>attributes with values</div>
<div data-test>attributes without values</div>

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$('[data-test~="foo"]') will select any element where the data attribute contains foo but doesn't have to be exact, such as:

<div data-test="foo">Exact Matches</div>
<div data-test="this has the word foo">Where the Attribute merely contains "foo"</div>

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$('[data-test="the_exact_value"]') will select any element where the data attribute exact value is the_exact_value, for example:

<div data-test="the_exact_value">Exact Matches</div>

but not

<div data-test="the_exact_value foo">This won't match</div>

Answer 2

Using $('[data-whatever="myvalue"]') will select anything with html attributes, but in newer jQueries it seems that if you use $(...).data(...) to attach data, it uses some magic browser thingy and does not affect the html, therefore is not discovered by .find as indicated in the previous answer.

Verify (tested with 1.7.2+) (also see fiddle): (updated to be more complete)

var $container = $('<div><div id="item1"/><div id="item2"/></div>');
// add html attribute
var $item1 = $('#item1').attr('data-generated', true);
// add as data
var $item2 = $('#item2').data('generated', true);
// create item, add data attribute via jquery
var $item3 = $('<div />', {id: 'item3', data: { generated: 'true' }, text: 'Item 3' });
$container.append($item3);
// create item, "manually" add data attribute
var $item4 = $('<div id="item4" data-generated="true">Item 4</div>');
$container.append($item4);
// only returns $item1 and $item4
var $result = $container.find('[data-generated="true"]');

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Answer 3

I haven't seen a JavaScript answer without jQuery. Hopefully it helps someone.

var elements = document.querySelectorAll('[data-customerID="22"]');

elements[0].innerHTML = 'it worked!';

<a data-customerID='22'>test</a>