Question

Why does jQuery don’t return value of ‘checked’ attribute?

It always returns ‘checked’, no matter what is in it.

<div id='div' checked='checked_value'></div>
<script>
    var attr_value = $('#div').attr('checked');
    alert(attr_value);
    // attr_value == 'checked' no matter what
</script>

http://jsfiddle.net/BbRmH/2/

It was okay, in 1.4, but when I upgraded to 1.8 it totally messed my code. I use checked attribute a lot.

Answer 1

I believe in the more recent versions of jQuery the correct syntax would be –

$("element").prop('checked');

The difference between attributes and properties can be important in specific situations. Before jQuery 1.6, the .attr() method sometimes took property values into account when retrieving some attributes, which could cause inconsistent behavior. As of jQuery 1.6, the .prop() method provides a way to explicitly retrieve property values, while .attr() retrieves attributes.

• prop()

---

I believe however, that you might be using this property incorrectly. Usually, one would just test for the existence of the checked selector. There can really only be two states. Checked and unchecked. Usually, one would use something like this –

$('.groupOfCheckboxes:checked')

This would return a list of all the matched checkboxes that are checked. You also used this property on a <div> element. This is not valid HTML. You should really stick to valid markup if you want the most consistent results across browsers.