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 <button> .
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
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.
More Examples
Change an input field to an input button:
Add a href attribute to an <a> 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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How to add/update an attribute to an HTML element using JavaScript?
I’m trying to find a way that will add / update attribute using JavaScript. I know I can do it with setAttribute() function but that doesn’t work in IE.
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4 Answers 4
You can read here about the behaviour of attributes in many different browsers, including IE.
element.setAttribute() should do the trick, even in IE. Did you try it? If it doesn’t work, then maybe element.attributeName = ‘value’ might work.
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What seems easy is actually tricky if you want to be completely compatible.
Let’s say you have an id of ‘div1’ to add. These will all work except the last in IE 5.5 (which is ancient history at this point but still is XP’s default with no updates).
But there are contingencies, of course. Will not work in IE prior to 8: e.attributes[‘style’] Will not error but won’t actually set the class, it must be className: e[‘class’] .
However, if you’re using attributes then this WILL work: e.attributes[‘class’]
In summary, think of attributes as literal and object-oriented.
In literal, you just want it to spit out x=’y’ and not think about it. This is what attributes, setAttribute, createAttribute is for (except for IE’s style exception). But because these are really objects things can get confused.
Since you are going to the trouble of properly creating a DOM element instead of jQuery innerHTML slop, I would treat it like one and stick with the e.className = ‘fooClass’ and e.id = ‘fooID’. This is a design preference, but in this instance trying to treat is as anything other than an object works against you.
It will never backfire on you like the other methods might, just be aware of class being className and style being an object so it’s style.width not style=»width:50px». Also remember tagName but this is already set by createElement so you shouldn’t need to worry about it.
This was longer than I wanted, but CSS manipulation in JS is tricky business.
Как через js добавить атрибут в тег html
We can use two approaches to modify an attribute of an HTML element using JavaScript.
setAttribute() method: is used to add an attribute and provide it a value to a specific element. if the attribute already exists, it just modifies or sets its value.
Approach 1: We can use the inbuilt setAttribute() function of JavaScript.
Syntax:
So what basically we are doing is initializing the element in JavaScript by getting its id and then using setAttribute() to modify its attribute.
Example: Below is the implementation of the above approach.