addClass/removeClass based on selected items data attribute

Question

I'm a little stuck here. I have a ul menu of links. When a user selects from this list, I'm calling up content from another page with ajax. I want to grab a data attribute (data-flag) from the selected anchor and add that attribute as a class to the div that holds the ajax content (#fourteen). The adding class piece is working fine. However, when a new item is selected from the ul menu, I can't seem to remove the other classes from the content div. With each click, it just adds more classes.

Here's my code.

<ul id="langtest" class="tp_lang2">
 <li><a href="http://myurl.com/14-languages" data-flag="us" data-lang="English">English</a></li>
 <li><a href="http://myurl.com/zh/14-languages" data-flag="cn" data-lang="Chinese (Simplified)">中文(简体)</a></li>
 <li><a href="http://myurl.com/nl/14-languages" data-flag="nl" data-lang="Dutch">Nederlands</a></li>
 <li><a href="http://myurl.com/fr/14-languages" data-flag="fr" data-lang="French">Français</a></li>
</ul>

<div id="fourteen" class="cn">
 <div id="content">
  <div class="main-content">Content being served up here.
  </div>
 </div>
</div>

    <script>

     jQuery("ul#langtest li a").click(function() {

        jQuery('#fourteen').load($(this).attr("href") + " #content");
        jQuery('#fourteen').removeClass.not(this).attr("data-flag");
        jQuery('#fourteen').addClass($(this).attr("data-flag"));
        return false;
        });

    </script>

Answer 1

You just need to remove all class in the element like so :

// remove all class
jQuery('#fourteen').removeClass();
// then add class name with data flag selected anchor only
jQuery('#fourteen').addClass($(this).attr("data-flag"));

DEMO(inspect element to see the class actually added & removed)