jQuery how to find an element based on a data-attribute value?

Jannis picture Jannis · Nov 16, 2010 · Viewed 1.3M times · Source

I've got the following scenario:

var el = 'li';

and there are 5 <li>'s on the page each with a data-slide=number attribute (number being 1,2,3,4,5 respectively).

I now need to find the currently active slide number which is mapped to var current = $('ul').data(current); and is updated on each slide change.

So far my tries have been unsuccessful, trying to construct the selector that would match the current slide:

$('ul').find(el+[data-slide=+current+]);

does not match/return anything…

The reason I can't hardcode the li part is that this is a user accessible variable that can be changed to a different element if required, so it may not always be an li.

Any ideas on what I'm missing?

Answer

Fr&#233;d&#233;ric Hamidi picture Frédéric Hamidi · Nov 16, 2010

You have to inject the value of current into an Attribute Equals selector:

$("ul").find(`[data-slide='${current}']`)

For older JavaScript environments (ES5 and earlier):

$("ul").find("[data-slide='" + current + "']");