Store and use an array using the HTML data tag and jQuery

If you use valid JSON ([ and ] for the array, double quotes instead of single), like this:

<div id="locations" data-locations='[{"name":"Bath","url":"/location/bath","img":"/thumb.jpg"},{"name":"Berkhamsted","url":"/location/berkhamsted","img":"/thumb.jpg"}]'>

Then what you have (using .data()) to get the array will work:

$('#locations').data('locations');

You can test it here.

Try adding [ and ] to beginning and end (this makes it valid JSON). After doing so, you can use JSON.parse() to convert it to a native JavaScript object.