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CSS•CSS Foundations

CSS Attribute Selectors

Flash cards

Review the key moves

1/4
Core idea

What is the main idea behind CSS Attribute Selectors?

Lesson checks

Practice each idea before moving on

Short Mimo-style checks built from this lesson's code, terms, and sequence.

1Quick choice

Which statement best captures the main point of this lesson?

2Fill blank

Complete the missing token from the example code.

___-color: yellow;
3Order

Put the learning moves in the order that makes the concept easiest to apply.

CSS [attribute="value"] Selector
CSS [attribute] Selector
CSS Attribute Selectors

CSS attribute selectors are used to select and style HTML elements with a specific attribute or attribute value, or both.

Attribute selectors are enclosed in square brackets [] .

CSS has the following attribute selectors

  • [attribute] - Select elements with the specified attribute
  • [attribute="value"] - Select elements with a specific attribute and an exact value
  • [attribute~="value"] - Select elements with an attribute value containing a specific word
- [attribute="value"] - Select elements with the specific attribute, whose value can be exactly the value, or start with the value followed by a hyphen (-)
  • [attribute^="value"] - Select elements whose attribute value starts with a specific value
  • [attribute$="value"] - Select elements whose attribute value ends with a specific value
  • [attribute*="value"] - Select elements whose attribute value contains a specific value

Tip

The attribute selectors are case-sensitive by default. To perform a case-insensitive match, add an i before the closing bracket. Example: [attribute="value" i] .

CSS [attribute] Selector

The [attribute] selector is used to select elements with the specified attribute.

The following example selects all <a> elements with a target attribute:

Example

Formatted code
a[target] {
  background-color: yellow;
}

Live preview

CSS [attribute="value"] Selector

The [attribute="value"] selector is used to select elements with a specific attribute with an exact value.

The following example selects all <a> elements with a target="_blank" attribute:

Example

Formatted code
a[target="_blank"] {
  background-color: yellow;
}

Live preview

CSS [attribute~="value"] Selector

The [attribute~="value"] selector is used to select elements with an attribute value containing a specific word.

The following example selects all elements with a title attribute that contains a space-separated list of words, one of which is "flower":

Example

Formatted code
[title~="flower"] {
  border: 5px solid yellow;
}

Live preview

The example above will match elements with title="flower", title="summer flower", and title="flower new", but not title="my-flower" or title="flowers".

CSS [attribute|="value"] Selector

The [attribute|="value"] selector is used to select elements with the specific attribute, whose value can be exactly the specific value, or start with the specific value followed by a hyphen (-).

Note

The value has to be a whole word, either alone, like class="top", or followed by a hyphen ( - ), like class="top-text".

Example

Formatted code
[class|="top"] {
  background: yellow;
}

Live preview

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CSS Advanced Attribute Selectors