Question

If I have this:

<span data-helo="1">something</span>
<span data-helo="2">something different</span>

and I want to target the first span, how should I do it?

I tried something like:

$('span').data('helo', '1')

But it returned both spans.

Answer 1

try:

$('span[data-helo="1"]')

this will target all span-elements with a data-helo-attribute of value 1.

http://jsfiddle.net/F2NUk/

with your code:

$('span').data('helo', '1')

you’re targeting all span-elements and setting their data-helo attribute to 1. And then returning that collection (through typical jQuery chaining).