Element properties just for Javascript reference?

[davej]

What if you wanted to assign a property to an input just to identify some sort of desired reference for Javascript? What would the best practice be in that situation? Is there an appropriate do-nothing property for that purpose? For example a particular radio button is associated with the visibility of particular fields in a different part of the page. When Javascript scans the radio button it can also read the cross-reference property to get the class of the text fields that are to be toggled.

 

I could use class, but that might create confusion since it would not be intended for styling.

 

I could use undefined/custom attributes but that might also cause confusion. I believe browsers are supposed to ignore any attribute they don't understand, but is that considered bad practice?

 

Input properties:

http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_input.asp

 

Thanks

[justsomeguy]

You could use class, sometimes I use rel. You can also create your own prefixed with data-, e.g.:

 

<input data-test="value" ...

[davej]

Is "data-" some sort of convention?

[Ingolme]

It allows custom attributes pass the validator in HTML 5. It's part of the specification.

[davej]

Oh.

 

http://html5doctor.com/html5-custom-data-attributes/