Creating a local reference to a jQuery.data key

Question

I\'m doing some testing on jQuery.data(), and I\'m trying to create a local reference to a certain data-key, which I hopefully can change locally and still affect \

Answer 1

If you store an object (or array) in .data() then you're actually storing a reference to it, so if you do:

var obj = { key: 'value' }
$(el).data('obj') = obj;
obj.key = 'new value';

$(el).data('obj').key will also be new value, because it's the same object.

However if the value stored is a plain type instead (e.g. a number or a string) that a copy of it will be stored:

var n = 5;
$(el).data('obj') = n;
n++;

$(el).data('obj') will still be 5.