We have this 'strange' situation where some product codes, for example 11E6, which are stored in data attributes (ex data-prodcode) are getting converted to 11000000, when retrieved inside jquery click function. Something like this:

    <a data-prodcode="11E6">click</a>
    var code = $(this).data('prodcode');
    console.log(code); --> 11000000

Any advice on how to avoid this behavior or what may cause it?

We have this 'strange' situation where some product codes, for example 11E6, which are stored in data attributes (ex data-prodcode) are getting converted to 11000000, when retrieved inside jquery click function. Something like this:

    <a data-prodcode="11E6">click</a>
    var code = $(this).data('prodcode');
    console.log(code); --> 11000000

Any advice on how to avoid this behavior or what may cause it?

• javascript
• jquery
• custom-data-attribute
• jquery-data

• 3 That's because .data attempts to auto-convert values into numbers or Booleans when possible, and the string 11E6 looks like a number in scientific notation to a puter. – Blazemonger Commented Feb 18, 2013 at 16:25

1 Answer 1

From the documentation :

Every attempt is made to convert the string to a JavaScript value (this includes booleans, numbers, objects, arrays, and null) otherwise it is left as a string. To retrieve the value's attribute as a string without any attempt to convert it, use the attr() method.

You may use attr in order to avoid automatic parsing :

var code = $(this).attr('data-prodcode');

To be more precise : this shouldn't happen. And in fact it doesn't happen in last versions. Here's the code of current's jQuery (the most interesting part is the ment) :

    if ( typeof data === "string" ) {
        try {
            data = data === "true" ? true :
                data === "false" ? false :
                data === "null" ? null :
                // Only convert to a number if it doesn't change the string
                +data + "" === data ? +data :
                rbrace.test( data ) ? jQuery.parseJSON( data ) :
                    data;
        } catch( e ) {}

And it works in jQuery 1.8 and 1.9 : it doesn't convert the string to a number if a back conversion doesn't produce the same string. But it didn't work in jQuery 1.7.