Question

This is my first stackoverflow question, so try to be nice. ;-D

My issue is this, I am refactoring some existing javascript code and using jQuery to do it. In several places I’ve come across javascript code similar to the following:

// some js code working with the customAttribute value javascriptElementObject.customAttribue = void(0); 

The javascriptElementObject is now a jQuery object and I have been attempting to use the following code to do the same thing:

// some js code working with the customAttribute value javascriptElementObject.attr('customAttribute', void(0)); 

However, this does not seem to be doing anything. The following code works however:

javascriptElementObject.get(0).customAttribute = void(0); 

I’m aware of jQuery’s removeAttr() function, but have not used it so far because I don’t know if it’s equivalent to setting the attribute value to void(0).

So I guess that really means I have 2 questions:

1. Why doesn’t the first jQuery version work?
2. Are .get(0).customAttribue = void(0); and .removeAttr(‘customAttribute); equivalent?

Thanks.

Answer 1

jQuery likes to overload its methods so:

obj.attr( name ) //retrieves the attribute value obj.attr( name, value ) //sets the attribute  obj.attr( name, void(0) ) == obj.attr( name, null ) == obj.attr( name ) //i.e retrieving the attribute 

You might want to try the following if you want to set an empty attribute

obj.attr( name, '' ) 

This will also apply to other methods jQuery.html() for example