Using jQuery's datastore vs. expando properties

Question

I\'m developing code using jQuery and need to store data associated with certain DOM elements. There are a bunch of other questions about how to store arbitrary data w

Answer 1

If you are authoring a plugin you should use $.data. If you need to store the attribute often and rarely need to query the DOM for it then use $.data.

Update 5 years later: jQuery does not query the DOM based on expando properties set, and hasn't done so for a while. So use $.data. There's no reason to pollute the DOM when there is no pragmatic use to do so.