Question

What happens when you write more than one th:* attribute in the same tag? For example:

<ul>
  <li th:each="item : ${items}" th:text="${item.description}">Item description here...</li>
</ul>

We would expect that th:each attribute to execute before the th:text so that we get the results we want, but given the fact that the HTML/XML standards do not give any kind of meaning to the order in which the attributes in a tag are written, a precedence mechanism had to be established in the attributes themselves in order to be sure that this will work as expected.

So, all Thymeleaf attributes define a numeric precedence, which establishes the order in which they are executed in the tag. This order is:

Order	Feature	Attributes
1	Fragment inclusion	th:insert th:replace
2	Fragment iteration	th:each
3	Conditional evaluation	th:if th:unless th:switch th:case
4	Local variable definition	th:object th:with
5	General attribute modification	th:attr th:attrprepend th:attrappend
6	Specific attribute modification	th:value th:href th:src ...
7	Text (tag body modification)	th:text th:utext
8	Fragment specification	th:fragment
9	Fragment removal	th:remove

This precedence mechanism means that the above iteration fragment will give exactly the same results if the attribute position is inverted (although it would be slightly less readable):

<ul>
  <li th:text="${item.description}" th:each="item : ${items}">Item description here...</li>
</ul>