Question

I’ve got a bunch of Raphael element objects on a canvas and have associated data with each, like so:

element.data('dataVal',x);

In the above example, I’d like to know where x is stored. I’ve been looking through the source for Raphael.js and have zeroed in on this section:

elproto.data = function (key, value) {
    var data = eldata[this.id] = eldata[this.id] || {};
    if (arguments.length == 1) {
        if (R.is(key, "object")) {
            for (var i in key) if (key[has](i)) {
                this.data(i, key[i]);
            }
            return this;
        }
        eve("raphael.data.get." + this.id, this, data[key], key);
        return data[key];
    }
    data[key] = value;
    eve("raphael.data.set." + this.id, this, value, key);
    return this;
};

So, my hunch is that ‘eldata’ is a property of a Raphael paper object and that ‘eldata’ contains objects for each Raphael element, and it is in these objects that the data are stored.

In essence, my question is: Once I’ve created a Raphael canvas, added elements, and added data to those elements, how would I access the data (without using a Raphael function)? I’ve tried simple stuff like looking for R.eldata (where R is a Raphael canvas), but that wasn’t fruitful.

Your help is appreciated!

Answer 1

eldata is a local variable defined within a closure (line numbers on the left from v2.1.0):

 233|  (function () {
....|
 254|      var loaded,
....|
 382|          eldata = {},
....|
2396|      elproto.data = function (key, value) {
....|
2413|      elproto.removeData = function (key) {
....|
3743|  })();

Because it’s enclosed, it can only be accessed by a function defined within that same closure. So, you will have to use Raphael’s data and removeData methods to access it.