Question

I want to store server-side Id(s) of items within an attribute defined on <li> tags, such that I could retrieve them within JS methods when there is a click event on them.

Is there any attribute that I could use to store this kind of data?

I tried putting server side ids of items into id attribute of <li> tags but it doesnt allow ids starting with digits
!

Answer 1

HTML5 introduces data- attributes which can be very useful in cases such as this one.

<li data-something="test">...</li>

Then, in JavaScript, you can fetch using:

elem.getAttribute('data-something');

or (not IE supported):

elem.dataset.something;

http://jsfiddle.net/9g33e/