I want to get an element using id:

var a = document.getElementById("hello");

and then dynamically add an attribute to it called "labelText" and assign the value "{labeltext}" to it.

do i need to use concatenation?

i tried the following but it didn't work:

document.getElementById("hello").setAttribute("labelText", "'{' + labelText + '}' ");

I want to get an element using id:

var a = document.getElementById("hello");

and then dynamically add an attribute to it called "labelText" and assign the value "{labeltext}" to it.

do i need to use concatenation?

i tried the following but it didn't work:

document.getElementById("hello").setAttribute("labelText", "'{' + labelText + '}' ");

• javascript
• jquery
• string
• dom
• attributes

Share Improve this question Follow edited Aug 22, 2016 at 0:39 sarah asked Aug 22, 2016 at 0:21 sarahsarah 15711 gold badge33 silver badges1111 bronze badges 13

• Your quotes are wrong. – SLaks Commented Aug 22, 2016 at 0:22
• can you please give more explanation – sarah Commented Aug 22, 2016 at 0:24
• @SLaks where? can you please correct the code statement – sarah Commented Aug 22, 2016 at 0:26
• 1 "string" + variable + "string" => "{" + labelText + "}" – Ram Commented Aug 22, 2016 at 0:27
• 2 setAttribute is the correct way of setting an attribute on a DOM element. You need to elaborate on "it didn't work". – Felix Kling Commented Aug 22, 2016 at 0:45

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1 Answer 1

Sorted by: Reset to default 2

What you are doing basically works, with the syntax errors first explicitly identified by Vohuman corrected.

//Assign the Attribute:
var labelText='Some Value';
document.getElementById("hello").setAttribute('labelText', '{' + labelText + '}' );

//Define some variables for getting the results
var attributeEl = document.getElementById("attribute");
var theHTMLEl = document.getElementById("theHTML");

///Get the attribute value
var textLabelValue = document.getElementById("hello").getAttribute('labelText');

//Show the results:
attributeEl.textContent = textLabelValue;
theHTMLEl.textContent = document.getElementById("hello").outerHTML;

<div id="hello"></div>
The labelText attribute is:
<div id="attribute"></div>
The resulting HTML is:
<div id="theHTML"></div>