Data Methods

There's often data about an element you want to store with the element. In plain JavaScript, you might do this by adding a property to the DOM element, but you'd have to deal with memory leaks in some browsers. jQuery offers a straightforward way to store data related to an element, and it manages the memory issues for you.

                              
                                // Storing and retrieving data related to an element
                              
                              $("#myDiv").data( "keyName", { foo: "bar" } );
                            
                                // { foo: "bar" }
                              
                              $("#myDiv").data("keyName");

Any kind of data can be stored on an element. For the purposes of this article, $.fn.data will be used to store references to other elements.

For example, you may want to establish a relationship between a list item and a <div> that's inside of it. This relationship could be established every single time the list item is touched, but a better solution would be to establish the relationship once, then store a pointer to the <div> on the list item using $.fn.data:

                              
                                // Storing a relationship between elements using $.fn.data
                              
                              $("#myList li").each(function() {
                            
                                var $li = $( this );
                            
                                var $div = $li.find("div.content");
                            
                                $li.data( "contentDiv", $div );
                            
                              });
                            
                                // later, we don't have to find the div again;
                              
                                // we can just read it from the list item's data
                              
                              var $firstLi = $("#myList li:first");
                            
                              $firstLi.data("contentDiv").html("new content");

In addition to passing $.fn.data a single key-value pair to store data, you can also pass an object containing one or more pairs.

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