Solve - setAttribute is not a function Error in JavaScript

Solve - setAttribute is not a function Error #

The "setAttribute is not a function" error occurs for multiple reasons:

calling the setAttribute() method on a value that is not a DOM element.
placing the JS script tag above the code that declares the DOM elements.
calling the setAttribute method on a jQuery object (should use attr() instead).

typeerror setattribute is not a function

If you're using jQuery, use the attr() method instead of setAttribute.

index.js

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const box = $('#box');
console.log(box);

// ✅ works
box.attr('id', 'first');

Here is an example of how the error occurs in JavaScript.

index.html

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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
  </head>

  <body>
    <div class="box">Box 1</div>
    <div class="box">Box 2</div>
    <div class="box">Box 3</div>

    <!-- ✅ Your JS script here ✅ -->
    <script type="module" src="index.js"></script>
  </body>
</html>

Notice that the JS script tag is placed at the bottom of the body tag. Had we placed the JS script tag above the code that declares the DOM elements, they wouldn't be accessible in the index.js file.

Here is the code in index.js.

index.js

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const boxes = document.querySelectorAll('.box');
console.log(boxes); // 👉️ [div.box, div.box, div.box]

// ⛔️ Uncaught TypeError: boxes.setAttribute is not a function
boxes.setAttribute('id', 'first');

We called the Element.setAttribute method on a NodeList and not a DOM element, so we got the error back.

To solve the "setAttribute is not a function" error, make sure to only call the setAttribute method on valid DOM elements and place the JS script tag at the bottom of the body, after the DOM elements have been declared.

index.js

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const boxes = document.querySelectorAll('.box');
console.log(boxes); // 👉️ [div.box, div.box, div.box]

// ✅ Works
boxes[0].setAttribute('id', 'first');

By accessing the element at index 0 of the NodeList, we got back a DOM element, on which we can safely call the setAttribute method.

If the element you're calling the method on sometimes does not exist, you can conditionally check if the element is there before calling the setAttribute method on it.

For example, a basic DOM element has a type of object, so we can check if the value is an object and contains the setAttribute property before calling the method.

index.js

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const box = null;

if (typeof box === 'object' && box !== null && 'setAttribute' in box) {
  box.setAttribute('id', 'example');
}

Our if condition uses the logical AND (&&) operator, so for the if block to run, all of the conditions have to be met.

We first check if the box variable stores a value with a type of object, because DOM elements have a type of object.

Then we check if the variable is not equal to null. Unfortunately, if you check the type of null - console.log(typeof null), you will get an "object" value back, so we have to make sure the value is not null.

The last thing we check for is that the object contains the setAttribute property.

Then we know we can safely call the setAttribute method on the object.

Solve - setAttribute is not a function Error in JavaScript

Solve - setAttribute is not a function Error #

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Borislav Hadzhiev