jQuery how to find an element based on a data-attr

Question

I've got the following scenario:

var el = 'li';

and there are 5 <li>'s on the page each with a data-slide=number attribute (number being 1,2,3,4,5 respectively).

I now need to find the currently active slide number which is mapped to var current = $('ul').data(current); and is updated on each slide change.

So far my tries have been unsuccessful, trying to construct the selector that would match the current slide:

$('ul').find(el+[data-slide=+current+]);

does not match/return anything…

The reason I can't hardcode the li part is that this is a user accessible variable that can be changed to a different element if required, so it may not always be an li.

Any ideas on what I'm missing?

Answer 1

in case you don't want to type all that, here's a shorter way to query by data attribute:

$("ul[data-slide='" + current +"']");

FYI: http://james.padolsey.com/javascript/a-better-data-selector-for-jquery/

Answer 2

Going back to his original question, about how to make this work without knowing the element type in advance, the following does this:

$(ContainerNode).find(el.nodeName + "[data-slide='" + current + "']");

Answer 3

This selector $("ul [data-slide='" + current +"']"); will work for following structure:

<ul><li data-slide="item"></li></ul>  

While this $("ul[data-slide='" + current +"']"); will work for:

<ul data-slide="item"><li></li></ul>