w3c / w3c/csswg-drafts

[css-selectors] Be able to select for partial attribute names

Open
#8,632 1 comment 3 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

selectors-4 selectors-5
Dominant language
Bikeshed
Stars
4.9k
Forks
816
PR merge metrics
PR metrics pending

Description

It can be useful to select for partial attribute names (not values); for example trying select all elements with an aria attribute (i.e. any attribute name which matches /aria-.*/) or data attribute (/data-.*/), another example is the recent popover attributes; popovertoggletarget, popoverhidetarget, popovershowtarget - it would be useful to have on selector to find all "popover invokers" that have an attribute matching /^popover.*target$/.

I'd like to propose some way of extending the attribute selector syntax to allow for this kind of wildcard. Simple wildcards rather than regexes will likely be sufficient.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reviewing the existing CSS attribute selector syntax and the issue’s examples for aria-, data-, and popover-related attribute names. Compare wildcard matching with the proposed regular-expression cases, then determine a concrete syntax and document its expected behavior and limits in the CSS specification discussion.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
css
Domain
frontend
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
25/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.