Here is a PHP class that allows you to create HTML attributes from a php array. If you pass the second parameter the key will be prefixed with 'data-' prefix so they can be access via jQuery later.

array2attribs

Class HTML_Util {
	/**
     * Usage: HTML_Util::array2attribs();
     * @param array $attributes
     * @param bool $make_them_data will prefix each key with 'data-' prefix so it's acessible via $('#elem').data();
     * @return string
	 * @see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18081625/how-do-i-map-an-associative-array-to-html-element-attributes
     */
    public static function array2attribs($attributes = array(), $make_them_data = 0) {
        $pairs = array();
        
        foreach ($attributes as $name => $value) {
			if ($make_them_data) {
				$name = 'data-' . $name; // prefix the keys with data- prefix so it's accessible later.
			}
            
            $name  = htmlentities($name, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');
            $value = htmlentities($value, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');
            
            if (is_bool($value)) {
                if ($value) {
                    $pairs[] = $name;
                }
            } else {
                $pairs[] = sprintf('%s="%s"', $name, $value);
            }
        }

        return join(' ', $pairs);
    }
}