Differentiation of Attribute Selectors in CSS

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Style HTML Elements With Specific Attributes

It is possible to style HTML elements that have specific attributes or attribute values .It is an excellent way to style the HTML elements by grouping them based on some specific attributes and the attribute selector will select those elements with similar attributes.

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CSS [attribute] Selector

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

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

Example

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

CSS [attribute=”value”] Selector

The [attribute="value"] selector is used to select elements with a specified attribute and value.

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

Example

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

CSS [attribute~=”value”] Selector

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

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

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 specified attribute, whose value can be exactly the specified value, or the specified 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

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

CSS [attribute^=”value”] Selector

The [attribute^="value"] selector is used to select elements with the specified attribute, whose value starts with the specified value.

The following example selects all elements with a class attribute value that starts with “top”:

Note: The value does not have to be a whole word!

Example

[class^="top"] {
  background: yellow;
}

CSS [attribute$=”value”] Selector

The [attribute$="value"] selector is used to select elements whose attribute value ends with a specified value. The following example selects all elements with a class attribute value that ends with “test”:

Note: The value does not have to be a whole word!  

Example

[class$="test"] {
  background: yellow;
}

CSS [attribute*=”value”] Selector

The [attribute*="value"] selector is used to select elements whose attribute value contains a specified value. The following example selects all elements with a class attribute value that contains “te”:

Note: The value does not have to be a whole word!  

Example

[class*="te"] {
  background: yellow;
}

Styling Forms

The attribute selectors can be useful for styling forms without class or ID:

Example

input[type="text"] {
  width: 150px;
  display: block;
  margin-bottom: 10px;
  background-color: yellow;
}

input[type="button"] {
  width: 120px;
  margin-left: 35px;
  display: block;
}