DOM:element.getAttribute

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Contents 1 Summary 2 Syntax 3 Example 4 Notes 5 Specification

[edit] Summary

getAttribute() returns the value of the named attribute on the specified element. If the named attribute does not exist, the value returned will either be null or "" (the empty string); see Notes for details.

[edit] Syntax

attribute = element.getAttribute(attributeName)

where

• attribute is a string containing the value of attributeName.
• attributeName is the name of the attribute whose value you want to get.

[edit] Example

var div1 = document.getElementById("div1");
var align = div1.getAttribute("align");
alert(align); // shows the value of align for the element with id="div1"

[edit] Notes

Essentially all web browsers (Firefox, Internet Explorer, recent versions of Opera, Safari, Konqueror, and iCab, as a non-exhaustive list) return null when the specified attribute does not exist on the specified element. The DOM specification says that the correct return value in this case is actually the empty string, and some DOM implementations implement this behavior. Consequently, you should use hasAttribute to check for an attribute's existence prior to calling getAttribute() if it is possible that the requested attribute does not exist on the specified element.

The attributeName parameter is usually case sensitive, but it is case-insensitive when used upon HTML elements.

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	-

[edit] Specification

DOM Level 2 Core: getAttribute (introduced in DOM Level 1 Core)