<data>: The Data element

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since ⁨October 2017⁩.

The <data> HTML element links a given piece of content with a machine-readable translation. If the content is time- or date-related, the <time> element must be used.

Try it

<p>New Products:</p>
<ul>
  <li><data value="398">Mini Ketchup</data></li>
  <li><data value="399">Jumbo Ketchup</data></li>
  <li><data value="400">Mega Jumbo Ketchup</data></li>
</ul>

data:hover::after {
  content: " (ID " attr(value) ")";
  font-size: 0.7em;
}

Attributes

This element's attributes include the global attributes.

value: This attribute specifies the machine-readable translation of the content of the element.

Examples

The following example displays product names but also associates each name with a product number.

html

<p>New Products</p>
<ul>
  <li><data value="398">Mini Ketchup</data></li>
  <li><data value="399">Jumbo Ketchup</data></li>
  <li><data value="400">Mega Jumbo Ketchup</data></li>
</ul>

Result

Technical summary

Content categories	Flow content, phrasing content, palpable content.
Permitted content	Phrasing content.
Tag omission	None, both the starting and ending tag are mandatory.
Permitted parents	Any element that accepts phrasing content.
Implicit ARIA role	`generic`
Permitted ARIA roles	Any
DOM interface	`HTMLDataElement`

Specifications

Specification
HTML # the-data-element

Browser compatibility

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This page was last modified on ⁨Jul 9, 2025⁩ by MDN contributors.

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