Href on random element in jQuery

Question

I find myself using this method a ton to perform actions based on a anchor tag's URL (with jQuery):

("a").live("click", function(event) 
{
    event.preventDefault();
    var href = $(this).attr("href");
    // do something with URL
}

Elsewhere in my app, I've got some tabular data which I'm adding inline edits to. When you double click a <td> in the <table>, it makes the data editable (text, date select, etc) and hitting "enter" will make an $.ajax request to save the new value. My question is, if each one of these <td>'s has a href associated with it, how/where should I store the uri?

For example, a <td> would have a URL like /articles/field/title/id/5 which I would parse using javascript and send a post using some of the params.

Is this acceptable:

<td href="/articles/field/title/id/5">

And then use the same javascript as above? Or...

• Should I add a hidden inside the ?
• Should I wrap the content in an tag inside the and make that double-clickable instead?
• Or should I use some other property?

Ideas very much welcome.

Answer 1

href is not a valid attribute of the <td> tag. If you want the contents to be clickable in that manner, wrap the inside in a traditional <a> tag and handle that as you would any other link.

Answer 2

an option would be something like:

<td id="-articles-field-title-id-5">

in the case of not using IDs, "-" Can be any character.

Answer 3

jQuery optionally has a metadata plugin, where attributes are stored in the class attribute:

<td class="myClass { myAttrib: 'attrVal', mySecondAttrib: 69 }">

http://plugins.jquery.com/project/metadata