Detecting attribute change of value of an attribute I made

You would have to watch the DOM node changes. There is an API called MutationObserver, but it looks like the support for it is very limited. This SO answer has a link to the status of the API, but it seems like there is no support for it in IE or Opera so far.

One way you could get around this problem is to have the part of the code that modifies the data-select-content-val attribute dispatch an event that you can listen to.

For example, see: http://jsbin.com/arucuc/3/edit on how to tie it together.

The code here is

$(function() {  
  // Here you register for the event and do whatever you need to do.
  $(document).on('data-attribute-changed', function() {
    var data = $('#contains-data').data('mydata');
    alert('Data changed to: ' + data);
  });

  $('#button').click(function() {
    $('#contains-data').data('mydata', 'foo');
    // Whenever you change the attribute you will user the .trigger
    // method. The name of the event is arbitrary
    $(document).trigger('data-attribute-changed');
  });

   $('#getbutton').click(function() {
    var data = $('#contains-data').data('mydata');
    alert('Data is: ' + data);
  });
});