When to use setAttribute vs .attribute= in JavaScript?

Question

Has a best-practice around using setAttribute instead of the dot (.) attribute notation been developed?

E.g.:

myObj.setAttr         


        

Answer 1

methods for setting attributes(for example class) on an element: 1. el.className = string 2. el.setAttribute('class',string) 3. el.attributes.setNamedItem(object) 4. el.setAttributeNode(node)

I have made a simple benchmark test (here)

and it seems that setAttributeNode is about 3 times faster then using setAttribute.

so if performance is an issue - use "setAttributeNode"