Referencing an elem without an ID but has an attr - how?

Question

Possible Duplicate:
jquery v1.3.2 find element by attribute
Is it possible to grab a link by its href if it doesn’t have a class or ID?

My question revolves around having an attribute to an element (can't use ID's as I can' be certain that those will be unique) -

for instance, I have this:

<a href="someurl.com">Link</a>

but I can dynamically inject and could I possibly have a feasible/fast/efficient way of referencing this in the dom (keep in mind, there would be numerous links like this).

<a href="someurl.com" data-access-label="000998">Link</a>

So, I will be reiterating thru a hash and curious if this would be fast/efficient?

data = {
  '98789' : 'yeah',
  '871637':'cool',
  '00198789' : 'sure thing',
  '871609':'no way',
  '000998':'alright'
}

So, it seems inefficient to me that I would .each thru all the links then find the data-access-label value, and then what? could I possible bind those hrefs or something so that once I run my function - it would look like this

 <div>
   <a href="someurl.com" data-access-label="000998">Link</a> alright
       <span> <a href="someurl.com" data-access-label="871637">Link</a> cool</span>
 </div>

At any given time there will be only upwards of 40 items in the data hash, so perhaps I could ".each" thru it, and match the key with the value in those data-access-label ? But my want is perhaps directly accessing that item rather than reiterating thru href's too.

Could you specify what you're trying to achieve? Are those elements already in the DOM? If so use an attribute selector. — Fabrício Matté, Oct 29 '12 at 18:20
@fabricio - yes, the elements are in the dom. My *data* hash is built from an ajax call I do - and that associated text is just some additional descriptor for the link. I can have n number of links on the page, BUT some will have this data-access-label atrribute. Not all of the links on the page. I have some predetermined conditionals to determine. But the "value" of that lable *should* be unique - thus the number. If that number matches the key in the data hash - the I append the text. — james emanon, Oct 29 '12 at 18:33

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 29 '12 at 18:21

4

Using jQuery's attribute selector:

var link = $('[data-access-label*="' + identifier + '"]');

alert(link.text());

answered Oct 29 '12 at 18:21

Alex

34,899
5
77
90

1

Of course property names can be integers. Ever seen an Array in JS? – Bergi Oct 29 '12 at 18:24

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 29 '12 at 18:26

2

$("a[data-access-label]")

That will return an array of all a elements with that property.

You can then call the .each() for further processing.

http://api.jquery.com/has-attribute-selector/

answered Oct 29 '12 at 18:26

karljacuncha

164
2
4

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 29 '12 at 18:24

$("a").each(function(i) { 
    if (typeof $(this).attr('name') !== 'undefined' && $(this).attr('name') !== false) {
        // do work
    };
})

OR

$("a").each(function(i) { 
    if (typeof $(this).data('access-label') == "000998") {
        // do work
    };
})

OR

$('[data-access-label*="' + indexValue + '"]').click(function(e) { /* do work */ });

Referencing an elem without an ID but has an attr - how?

3 Answers3