- Element: setAttribute() method
- Syntax
- Parameters
- Return value
- Exceptions
- Examples
- HTML
- JavaScript
- Specifications
- Browser compatibility
- Gecko notes
- Found a content problem with this page?
- HTML DOM Element setAttribute()
- See Also:
- Tutorial:
- Syntax
- Parameters
- Return Value
- Note
- NO:
- YES:
- More Examples
- Browser Support
- COLOR PICKER
- Report Error
- Thank You For Helping Us!
- Javascript add attribute to elements
- # Create an Element with Style attribute using JavaScript
- # Additional Resources
- How to Add Attribute to DOM Element in JavaScript
- How to Add Attribute to DOM Element in JavaScript?
- Example 1: Add an Attribute to DOM Element
- Example 2: Add Multiple Attributes to DOM Element
- Conclusion
- About the author
- Syed Minhal Abbas
Element: setAttribute() method
Sets the value of an attribute on the specified element. If the attribute already exists, the value is updated; otherwise a new attribute is added with the specified name and value.
To get the current value of an attribute, use getAttribute() ; to remove an attribute, call removeAttribute() .
Syntax
Parameters
A string specifying the name of the attribute whose value is to be set. The attribute name is automatically converted to all lower-case when setAttribute() is called on an HTML element in an HTML document.
A string containing the value to assign to the attribute. Any non-string value specified is converted automatically into a string.
Boolean attributes are considered to be true if they’re present on the element at all. You should set value to the empty string ( «» ) or the attribute’s name, with no leading or trailing whitespace. See the example below for a practical demonstration.
Since the specified value gets converted into a string, specifying null doesn’t necessarily do what you expect. Instead of removing the attribute or setting its value to be null , it instead sets the attribute’s value to the string «null» . If you wish to remove an attribute, call removeAttribute() .
Return value
Exceptions
The specified attribute name contains one or more characters which are not valid in attribute names.
Examples
In the following example, setAttribute() is used to set attributes on a .
HTML
button height: 30px; width: 100px; margin: 1em; >
JavaScript
const button = document.querySelector("button"); button.setAttribute("name", "helloButton"); button.setAttribute("disabled", "");
This demonstrates two things:
- The first call to setAttribute() above shows changing the name attribute’s value to «helloButton». You can see this using your browser’s page inspector (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari).
- To set the value of a Boolean attribute, such as disabled , you can specify any value. An empty string or the name of the attribute are recommended values. All that matters is that if the attribute is present at all, regardless of its actual value, its value is considered to be true . The absence of the attribute means its value is false . By setting the value of the disabled attribute to the empty string ( «» ), we are setting disabled to true , which results in the button being disabled.
DOM methods dealing with element’s attributes:
Not namespace-aware, most commonly used methods | Namespace-aware variants (DOM Level 2) | DOM Level 1 methods for dealing with Attr nodes directly (seldom used) | DOM Level 2 namespace-aware methods for dealing with Attr nodes directly (seldom used) |
---|---|---|---|
setAttribute (DOM 1) | setAttributeNS | setAttributeNode | setAttributeNodeNS |
getAttribute (DOM 1) | getAttributeNS | getAttributeNode | getAttributeNodeNS |
hasAttribute (DOM 2) | hasAttributeNS | — | — |
removeAttribute (DOM 1) | removeAttributeNS | removeAttributeNode | — |
Specifications
Browser compatibility
BCD tables only load in the browser
Gecko notes
Using setAttribute() to modify certain attributes, most notably value in XUL, works inconsistently, as the attribute specifies the default value. To access or modify the current values, you should use the properties. For example, use Element.value instead of Element.setAttribute() .
Found a content problem with this page?
This page was last modified on Apr 7, 2023 by MDN contributors.
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HTML DOM Element setAttribute()
The setAttribute() method sets a new value to an attribute.
If the attribute does not exist, it is created first.
See Also:
Tutorial:
Syntax
Parameters
Parameter | Description |
name | Required. The name of the attribute. |
value | Required. The new attribute value. |
Return Value
Note
It is possible to add a style attribute with a value to an element, but it is not recommended because it can overwrite other properties in the style attribute.
NO:
YES:
More Examples
Change an input field to an input button:
Add a href attribute to an element:
Change the value of the target attribute to «_self»:
Browser Support
element.setAttribute() is a DOM Level 1 (1998) feature.
It is fully supported in all browsers:
Chrome | Edge | Firefox | Safari | Opera | IE |
Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | 9-11 |
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Javascript add attribute to elements
If I load the page from the example above, I can see that the attributes are applied to the element.
# Create an Element with Style attribute using JavaScript
To create an element with a style attribute:
- Use the document.createElement() method to create the element.
- Use the setAttribute() method to set the style attribute on the element.
- Add the element to the page using the appendChild() method.
Here is the HTML for the example.
Copied!DOCTYPE html> html lang="en"> head> title>bobbyhadz.comtitle> meta charset="UTF-8" /> head> body> div id="box">div> script src="index.js"> script> body> html>
And here is the related JavaScript code.
Copied!// ✅ Create element const el = document.createElement('div'); // ✅ Set Style Attributes on Element el.setAttribute( 'style', 'background-color: salmon; color: white; width: 150px; height: 150px;', ); // ✅ Alternatively, Set styles on Element // el.style.backgroundColor = 'salmon'; // el.style.color = 'white'; // el.style.width = '150px'; // el.style.height = '150px'; // ✅ Add text content to the element el.textContent = 'Hello world'; // ✅ Or set the innerHTML of the element // el.innerHTML = `Hello world`; // ✅ add element to DOM const box = document.getElementById('box'); box.appendChild(el);
We used the document.createElement method to create the element.
The only parameter we passed to the method is the type of element to be created ( div in the example).
The createElement method returns the newly created element.
We used the setAttribute method to set the style attribute on the element.
The setAttribute method takes 2 parameters:
- name — the name of the attribute whose value is to be set.
- value — the value to assign to the attribute.
If the attribute already exists, the value is updated, otherwise, a new attribute is added with the specified name and value.
Alternatively, you can use the style object to set styles on the element.
Copied!const el = document.createElement('div'); el.style.backgroundColor = 'salmon'; el.style.color = 'white'; el.style.width = '150px'; el.style.height = '150px';
When setting styles using the style property, multi-name words are camel-cased.
You can use the textContent property to set the element’s text content or the innerHTML property to set the element’s inner HTML markup.
You shouldn’t use the innerHTML property with user-provided data without escaping it. This would leave your application open to cross-site scripting attacks.
You can use the appendChild method to add the element to the page.
The method adds a node to the end of the list of children of the element it was called on.
If I load the page from the example, I can see that the style attribute is successfully set on the element.
# Additional Resources
You can learn more about the related topics by checking out the following tutorials:
I wrote a book in which I share everything I know about how to become a better, more efficient programmer.
How to Add Attribute to DOM Element in JavaScript
The DOM is the structure of an HTML document starting from its root element till the end of the document. Any element, such as “p”, “div“, or “table“, is referred to as the DOM element. The DOM elements allow the user to modify the content of the webpage. An attribute specifies the collection of objects. Moreover, JavaScript provides setAttribute() methods for adding or modifying the attributes of DOM elements. In this post, we have demonstrated all the possible methods to add attributes to the DOM elements in JavaScript.
- How to Add Attribute to DOM Element in JavaScript
- Add Attribute to DOM Element
- Add Multiple Attributes to DOM Element
How to Add Attribute to DOM Element in JavaScript?
The setAttribute() method is employed to add an attribute value to an existing element. If the attribute is already added, setAttribute() updates the value. It takes two inputs, one is the name, and the second specifies the value. By loading the webpage, the attribute property is applied to the DOM elements. The syntax of the setAttribute() method is provided below:
The parameters are described as follows:
- name: Refers to the attribute name.
- value: Specifies the value of the attribute.
Example 1: Add an Attribute to DOM Element
An example is considered by the addition of an attribute to the DOM element. The setAttribute() method is utilized for adding value to the attribute. The example code is written below:
< html >
< body >
< h2 >Example to add attribute to DOM element.
< p >Click the button to disable it
< button onclick = "btn_fn()" id = "btn" >Click Button