Question

Is there a way to have html point to a javascript object?

I know I could have a hash in JS to associate the tag id (or some other attribute) with the JS object, but is there a way to add the pointer to the html tag to the JS object?

<div id="user10"></div>
<div id="user11"></div>

then in JS have

function getUserPointedByTag(tag){
    //this is what I would like to have without going through a hash
} 
function myAwesomeUserDivClickHandler(clickedTag){
    user = getUserPointedByTag(clickedTag)
}

Answer 1

I think you’re better off using data- attributes to store the user ID in.

<div class="user" data-userid="10"></div>
<div class="user" data-userid="11"></div>

That way, you can easily retrieve the user ID associated with an element using:

document.addEventListener("click", function (e) {
    var node = e.target.tagName ? e.target : e.target.parentNode;
    var userId = e.getAttribute("data-userid");
    // Do something with the user ID
}, false);