Selectors Level 3

Abstract

Selectors are patterns that match against elements in a tree, and as such form one of several technologies that can be used to select nodes in an XML document. Selectors have been optimized for use with HTML and XML, and are designed to be usable in performance-critical code.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a language for describing the rendering of HTML and XML documents on screen, on paper, in speech, etc. CSS uses Selectors for binding style properties to elements in the document.

This document describes the selectors that already exist in CSS1 [[CSS1]] and CSS2 [[!CSS21]], and further introduces new selectors for CSS3 and other languages that may need them.

Selectors define the following function:

expression ∗ element → boolean

That is, given an element and a selector, this specification defines whether that element matches the selector.

These expressions can also be used, for instance, to select a set of elements, or a single element from a set of elements, by evaluating the expression across all the elements in a subtree. STTS (Simple Tree Transformation Sheets), a language for transforming XML trees, uses this mechanism. [[STTS3]]

Status of this document

A separate implementation report contains a test suite and shows several implementations of the specification.

Table of contents

Introduction

Selectors Level 1 and Selectors Level 2 are defined as the subsets of selector functionality defined in the CSS1 and CSS2.1 specifications, respectively.

Dependencies

Some features of this specification are specific to CSS, or have particular limitations or rules specific to CSS. In this specification, these have been described in terms of CSS2.1. [[!CSS21]]

Terminology

All of the text of this specification is normative except examples, notes, and sections explicitly marked as non-normative.

Additional terminology is defined in the Definitions section of [[!CSS21]]. Examples of document source code and fragments are given in XML [[XML10]] or HTML [[HTML401]] syntax.

Changes from CSS2

This section is non-normative.

The main differences between the selectors in CSS2 and those in Selectors are:

• the list of basic definitions (selector, group of selectors, simple selector, etc.) has been changed; in particular, what was referred to in CSS2 as a simple selector is now called a sequence of simple selectors, and the term "simple selector" is now used for the components of this sequence
• an optional namespace component is now allowed in element type selectors, the universal selector and attribute selectors
• a new combinator has been introduced
• new simple selectors including substring matching attribute selectors, and new pseudo-classes
• new pseudo-elements, and introduction of the "::" convention for pseudo-elements
• the grammar has been rewritten
• profiles to be added to specifications integrating Selectors and defining the set of selectors which is actually supported by each specification
• Selectors are now a CSS3 Module and an independent specification; other specifications can now refer to this document independently of CSS
• the specification now has its own test suite

Selectors

This section is non-normative, as it merely summarizes the following sections.

A Selector represents a structure. This structure can be used as a condition (e.g. in a CSS rule) that determines which elements a selector matches in the document tree, or as a flat description of the HTML or XML fragment corresponding to that structure.

Selectors may range from simple element names to rich contextual representations.

The following table summarizes the Selector syntax:

Case sensitivity

All Selectors syntax is case-insensitive within the ASCII range (i.e. [a-z] and [A-Z] are equivalent), except for parts that are not under the control of Selectors. The case sensitivity of document language element names, attribute names, and attribute values in selectors depends on the document language. For example, in HTML, element names are case-insensitive, but in XML, they are case-sensitive. Case sensitivity of namespace prefixes is defined in [[!CSS3NAMESPACE]].

Selector syntax

A selector is a chain of one or more sequences of simple selectors separated by combinators. One pseudo-element may be appended to the last sequence of simple selectors in a selector.

A sequence of simple selectors is a chain of simple selectors that are not separated by a combinator. It always begins with a type selector or a universal selector. No other type selector or universal selector is allowed in the sequence.

A simple selector is either a type selector, universal selector, attribute selector, class selector, ID selector, or pseudo-class.

Combinators are: whitespace, "greater-than sign" (U+003E, >), "plus sign" (U+002B, +) and "tilde" (U+007E, ~). White space may appear between a combinator and the simple selectors around it. Only the characters "space" (U+0020), "tab" (U+0009), "line feed" (U+000A), "carriage return" (U+000D), and "form feed" (U+000C) can occur in whitespace. Other space-like characters, such as "em-space" (U+2003) and "ideographic space" (U+3000), are never part of whitespace.

The elements of a document tree that are represented by a selector are the subjects of the selector. A selector consisting of a single sequence of simple selectors represents any element satisfying its requirements. Prepending another sequence of simple selectors and a combinator to a sequence imposes additional matching constraints, so the subjects of a selector are always a subset of the elements represented by the last sequence of simple selectors.

An empty selector, containing no sequence of simple selectors and no pseudo-element, is an invalid selector.

Characters in Selectors can be escaped with a backslash according to the same escaping rules as CSS. [[!CSS21]].

Certain selectors support namespace prefixes. The mechanism by which namespace prefixes are declared should be specified by the language that uses Selectors. If the language does not specify a namespace prefix declaration mechanism, then no prefixes are declared. In CSS, namespace prefixes are declared with the @namespace rule. [[!CSS3NAMESPACE]]

Groups of selectors

A comma-separated list of selectors represents the union of all elements selected by each of the individual selectors in the list. (A comma is U+002C.) For example, in CSS when several selectors share the same declarations, they may be grouped into a comma-separated list. White space may appear before and/or after the comma.

h1 { font-family: sans-serif }
h2 { font-family: sans-serif }
h3 { font-family: sans-serif }

h1, h2, h3 { font-family: sans-serif }

Warning: the equivalence is true in this example because all the selectors are valid selectors. If just one of these selectors were invalid, the entire group of selectors would be invalid. This would invalidate the rule for all three heading elements, whereas in the former case only one of the three individual heading rules would be invalidated.

h1 { font-family: sans-serif }
h2..foo { font-family: sans-serif }
h3 { font-family: sans-serif }

h1, h2..foo, h3 { font-family: sans-serif }

Simple selectors

Type selector

A type selector is the name of a document language element type written using the syntax of CSS qualified names [[!CSS3NAMESPACE]]. A type selector represents an instance of the element type in the document tree.

h1

Type selectors and namespaces

Type selectors allow an optional namespace component: a namespace prefix that has been previously declared may be prepended to the element name separated by the namespace separator "vertical bar" (U+007C, |). (See, e.g., [[XML-NAMES]] for the use of namespaces in XML.)

The namespace component may be left empty (no prefix before the namespace separator) to indicate that the selector is only to represent elements with no namespace.

An asterisk may be used for the namespace prefix, indicating that the selector represents elements in any namespace (including elements with no namespace).

Element type selectors that have no namespace component (no namespace separator) represent elements without regard to the element's namespace (equivalent to "*|") unless a default namespace has been declared for namespaced selectors (e.g. in CSS, in the style sheet). If a default namespace has been declared, such selectors will represent only elements in the default namespace.

A type selector containing a namespace prefix that has not been previously declared for namespaced selectors is an invalid selector.

In a namespace-aware client, the name part of element type selectors (the part after the namespace separator, if it is present) will only match against the local part of the element's qualified name.

In summary:

ns|E

elements with name E in namespace ns

*|E

elements with name E in any namespace, including those without a namespace

|E

elements with name E without a namespace

E

if no default namespace has been declared for selectors, this is equivalent to *|E. Otherwise it is equivalent to ns|E where ns is the default namespace.

@namespace foo url(http://www.example.com);
 foo|h1 { color: blue }  /* first rule */
 foo|* { color: yellow } /* second rule */
 |h1 { color: red }      /* ...*/
 *|h1 { color: green }
 h1 { color: green }

Universal selector

The universal selector, written as a CSS qualified name [[!CSS3NAMESPACE]] with an asterisk (* U+002A) as the local name, represents the qualified name of any element type. It represents any single element in the document tree in any namespace (including those without a namespace) if no default namespace has been specified for selectors. If a default namespace has been specified, see Universal selector and Namespaces below.

If a universal selector represented by * (i.e. without a namespace prefix) is not the only component of a sequence of simple selectors selectors or is immediately followed by a pseudo-element, then the * may be omitted and the universal selector's presence implied.

Note: it is recommended that the * not be omitted, because it decreases the potential confusion between, for example, div :first-child and div:first-child. Here, div *:first-child is more readable.

Universal selector and namespaces

The universal selector allows an optional namespace component. It is used as follows:

ns|*

all elements in namespace ns

*|*

all elements

|*

all elements without a namespace

*

if no default namespace has been specified, this is equivalent to *|*. Otherwise it is equivalent to ns|* where ns is the default namespace.

A universal selector containing a namespace prefix that has not been previously declared is an invalid selector.

Attribute selectors

Selectors allow the representation of an element's attributes. When a selector is used as an expression to match against an element, attribute selectors must be considered to match an element if that element has an attribute that matches the attribute represented by the attribute selector.

Attribute presence and value selectors

CSS2 introduced four attribute selectors:

[att]

Represents an element with the att attribute, whatever the value of the attribute.

[att=val]

Represents an element with the att attribute whose value is exactly "val".

[att~=val]

Represents an element with the att attribute whose value is a whitespace-separated list of words, one of which is exactly "val". If "val" contains whitespace, it will never represent anything (since the words are separated by spaces). Also if "val" is the empty string, it will never represent anything.

[att|=val]

Represents an element with the att attribute, its value either being exactly "val" or beginning with "val" immediately followed by "-" (U+002D). This is primarily intended to allow language subcode matches (e.g., the hreflang attribute on the a element in HTML) as described in BCP 47 ([[BCP47]]) or its successor. For lang (or xml:lang) language subcode matching, please see the :lang pseudo-class.

Attribute values must be CSS identifiers or strings. [[!CSS21]] The case-sensitivity of attribute names and values in selectors depends on the document language.

h1[title]

span[class="example"]

span[hello="Cleveland"][goodbye="Columbus"]

a[rel~="copyright"] { ... }
a[href="http://www.w3.org/"] { ... }

a[hreflang=fr]

a[hreflang|="en"]

DIALOGUE[character=romeo]
DIALOGUE[character=juliet]

Substring matching attribute selectors

Three additional attribute selectors are provided for matching substrings in the value of an attribute:

[att^=val]

Represents an element with the att attribute whose value begins with the prefix "val". If "val" is the empty string then the selector does not represent anything.

[att$=val]

Represents an element with the att attribute whose value ends with the suffix "val". If "val" is the empty string then the selector does not represent anything.

[att*=val]

Represents an element with the att attribute whose value contains at least one instance of the substring "val". If "val" is the empty string then the selector does not represent anything.

Attribute values must be CSS identifiers or strings. [[!CSS21]] The case-sensitivity of attribute names in selectors depends on the document language.

object[type^="image/"]

a[href$=".html"]

p[title*="hello"]

Attribute selectors and namespaces

The attribute name in an attribute selector is given as a CSS qualified name: a namespace prefix that has been previously declared may be prepended to the attribute name separated by the namespace separator "vertical bar" (|). In keeping with the Namespaces in the XML recommendation, default namespaces do not apply to attributes, therefore attribute selectors without a namespace component apply only to attributes that have no namespace (equivalent to "|attr"). An asterisk may be used for the namespace prefix indicating that the selector is to match all attribute names without regard to the attribute's namespace.

An attribute selector with an attribute name containing a namespace prefix that has not been previously declared is an invalid selector.

@namespace foo "http://www.example.com";
[foo|att=val] { color: blue }
[*|att] { color: yellow }
[|att] { color: green }
[att] { color: green }

Default attribute values in DTDs

Attribute selectors represent attribute values in the document tree. How that document tree is constructed is outside the scope of Selectors. In some document formats default attribute values can be defined in a DTD or elsewhere, but these can only be selected by attribute selectors if they appear in the document tree. Selectors should be designed so that they work whether or not the default values are included in the document tree.

For example, a XML UA may, but is not required to read an "external subset" of the DTD but is required to look for default attribute values in the document's "internal subset." (See, e.g., [[XML10]] for definitions of these subsets.) Depending on the UA, a default attribute value defined in the external subset of the DTD might or might not appear in the document tree.

A UA that recognizes an XML namespace may, but is not required to use its knowledge of that namespace to treat default attribute values as if they were present in the document. (For example, an XHTML UA is not required to use its built-in knowledge of the XHTML DTD. See, e.g., [[XML-NAMES]] for details on namespaces in XML 1.0.)

Note: Typically, implementations choose to ignore external subsets. This corresponds to the behaviour of non-validating processors as defined by the XML specification.

<!ATTLIST EXAMPLE radix (decimal,octal) "decimal">

EXAMPLE[radix=decimal] { /*... default property settings ...*/ }
EXAMPLE[radix=octal]   { /*... other settings...*/ }

EXAMPLE                { /*... default property settings ...*/ }
EXAMPLE[radix=octal]   { /*... other settings...*/ }

Class selectors

Working with HTML, authors may use the "period" notation (also known as "full stop", U+002E, .) as an alternative to the ~= notation when representing the class attribute. Thus, for HTML, div.value and div[class~=value] have the same meaning. The attribute value must immediately follow the full stop (.).

UAs may apply selectors using the period (.) notation in XML documents if the UA has namespace-specific knowledge that allows it to determine which attribute is the "class" attribute for the respective namespace. One such example of namespace-specific knowledge is the prose in the specification for a particular namespace (e.g. SVG 1.1 [[SVG11]] describes the SVG class attribute and how a UA should interpret it, and similarly MathML [[MATHML3]] describes the MathML class attribute.)

*.pastoral { color: green }  /* all elements with class~=pastoral */

.pastoral { color: green }  /* all elements with class~=pastoral */

H1.pastoral { color: green }  /* H1 elements with class~=pastoral */

<H1>Not green</H1>
<H1 class="pastoral">Very green</H1>

p.pastoral.marine { color: green }

Note: Because CSS gives considerable power to the "class" attribute, authors could conceivably design their own "document language" based on elements with almost no associated presentation (such as DIV and SPAN in HTML) and assigning style information through the "class" attribute. Authors should avoid this practice since the structural elements of a document language often have recognized and accepted meanings and author-defined classes may not.

Note: If an element has multiple class attributes, their values must be concatenated with spaces between the values before searching for the class. As of this time the working group is not aware of any manner in which this situation can be reached, however, so this behavior is explicitly non-normative in this specification.

ID selectors

Document languages may contain attributes that are declared to be of type ID. What makes attributes of type ID special is that no two such attributes can have the same value in a conformant document, regardless of the type of the elements that carry them; whatever the document language, an ID typed attribute can be used to uniquely identify its element. In HTML all ID attributes are named "id"; XML applications may name ID attributes differently, but the same restriction applies.

An ID-typed attribute of a document language allows authors to assign an identifier to one element instance in the document tree. An ID selector contains a "number sign" (U+0023, #) immediately followed by the ID value, which must be an CSS identifiers. An ID selector represents an element instance that has an identifier that matches the identifier in the ID selector.

Selectors does not specify how a UA knows the ID-typed attribute of an element. The UA may, e.g., read a document's DTD, have the information hard-coded or ask the user.

h1#chapter1

#chapter1

*#z98y

Note: In XML 1.0 [[XML10]], the information about which attribute contains an element's IDs is contained in a DTD or a schema. When parsing XML, UAs do not always read the DTD, and thus may not know what the ID of an element is (though a UA may have namespace-specific knowledge that allows it to determine which attribute is the ID attribute for that namespace). If a style sheet author knows or suspects that a UA may not know what the ID of an element is, he should use normal attribute selectors instead: [name=p371] instead of #p371.

If an element has multiple ID attributes, all of them must be treated as IDs for that element for the purposes of the ID selector. Such a situation could be reached using mixtures of xml:id, DOM3 Core, XML DTDs, and namespace-specific knowledge.

Pseudo-classes

The pseudo-class concept is introduced to permit selection based on information that lies outside of the document tree or that cannot be expressed using the other simple selectors.

A pseudo-class always consists of a "colon" (:) followed by the name of the pseudo-class and optionally by a value between parentheses.

Pseudo-classes are allowed in all sequences of simple selectors contained in a selector. Pseudo-classes are allowed anywhere in sequences of simple selectors, after the leading type selector or universal selector (possibly omitted). Pseudo-class names are case-insensitive. Some pseudo-classes are mutually exclusive, while others can be applied simultaneously to the same element. Pseudo-classes may be dynamic, in the sense that an element may acquire or lose a pseudo-class while a user interacts with the document.

Dynamic pseudo-classes

Dynamic pseudo-classes classify elements on characteristics other than their name, attributes, or content, in principle characteristics that cannot be deduced from the document tree.

Dynamic pseudo-classes do not appear in the document source or document tree.

The link pseudo-classes: :link and :visited

User agents commonly display unvisited links differently from previously visited ones. Selectors provides the pseudo-classes :link and :visited to distinguish them:

• The :link pseudo-class applies to links that have not yet been visited.
• The :visited pseudo-class applies once the link has been visited by the user.

After some amount of time, user agents may choose to return a visited link to the (unvisited) ':link' state.

The two states are mutually exclusive.

a.external:visited

Note: It is possible for style sheet authors to abuse the :link and :visited pseudo-classes to determine which sites a user has visited without the user's consent.

UAs may therefore treat all links as unvisited links, or implement other measures to preserve the user's privacy while rendering visited and unvisited links differently.

The user action pseudo-classes :hover, :active, and :focus

Interactive user agents sometimes change the rendering in response to user actions. Selectors provides three pseudo-classes for the selection of an element the user is acting on.

• The :hover pseudo-class applies while the user designates an element with a pointing device, but does not necessarily activate it. For example, a visual user agent could apply this pseudo-class when the cursor (mouse pointer) hovers over a box generated by the element. User agents not that do not support interactive media do not have to support this pseudo-class. Some conforming user agents that support interactive media may not be able to support this pseudo-class (e.g., a pen device that does not detect hovering).
• The :active pseudo-class applies while an element is being activated by the user. For example, between the times the user presses the mouse button and releases it. On systems with more than one mouse button, :active applies only to the primary or primary activation button (typically the "left" mouse button), and any aliases thereof.
• The :focus pseudo-class applies while an element has the focus (accepts keyboard or mouse events, or other forms of input).

There may be document language or implementation specific limits on which elements can become :active or acquire :focus.

These pseudo-classes are not mutually exclusive. An element may match several pseudo-classes at the same time.

Selectors doesn't define if the parent of an element that is ':active' or ':hover' is also in that state.

Note: If the ':hover' state applies to an element because its child is designated by a pointing device, then it's possible for ':hover' to apply to an element that is not underneath the pointing device.

a:link    /* unvisited links */
a:visited /* visited links */
a:hover   /* user hovers */
a:active  /* active links */

a:focus
a:focus:hover

Note: An element can be both ':visited' and ':active' (or ':link' and ':active').

The target pseudo-class :target

Some URIs refer to a location within a resource. This kind of URI ends with a "number sign" (#) followed by an anchor identifier (called the fragment identifier).

URIs with fragment identifiers link to a certain element within the document, known as the target element. For instance, here is a URI pointing to an anchor named section_2 in an HTML document:

http://example.com/html/top.html#section_2

A target element can be represented by the :target pseudo-class. If the document's URI has no fragment identifier, then the document has no target element.

p.note:target

*:target { color : red }
*:target::before { content : url(target.png) }

The language pseudo-class :lang

If the document language specifies how the human language of an element is determined, it is possible to write selectors that represent an element based on its language. For example, in HTML [[HTML401]], the language is determined by a combination of the lang attribute and possibly information from the meta elements or the protocol (such as HTTP headers). XML uses an attribute called xml:lang, and there may be other document language-specific methods for determining the language.

The pseudo-class :lang(C) represents an element that is in language C. Whether an element is represented by a :lang() selector is based solely on the element's language value (normalized to BCP 47 syntax if necessary) being equal to the identifier C, or beginning with the identifier C immediately followed by "-" (U+002D). The matching of C against the element's language value is performed case-insensitively within the ASCII range. The identifier C does not have to be a valid language name.

C must be a valid CSS identifier [[!CSS21]] and must not be empty. (Otherwise, the selector is invalid.)

Note: It is recommended that documents and protocols indicate language using codes from BCP 47 [[BCP47]] or its successor, and by means of "xml:lang" attributes in the case of XML-based documents [[XML10]]. See "FAQ: Two-letter or three-letter language codes."

html:lang(fr-be)
html:lang(de)
:lang(fr-be) > q
:lang(de) > q

The difference between :lang(C) and the '|=' operator is that the '|=' operator only performs a comparison against a given attribute on the element, while the :lang(C) pseudo-class uses the UAs knowledge of the document's semantics to perform the comparison.

<body lang=fr>
  <p>Je suis français.</p>
</body>

The UI element states pseudo-classes

The :enabled and :disabled pseudo-classes

The :enabled pseudo-class represents user interface elements that are in an enabled state; such elements have a corresponding disabled state.

Conversely, the :disabled pseudo-class represents user interface elements that are in a disabled state; such elements have a corresponding enabled state.

What constitutes an enabled state, a disabled state, and a user interface element is language-dependent. In a typical document most elements will be neither :enabled nor :disabled.

Note: CSS properties that might affect a user’s ability to interact with a given user interface element do not affect whether it matches :enabled or :disabled; e.g., the display and visibility properties have no effect on the enabled/disabled state of an element.

The :checked pseudo-class

Radio and checkbox elements can be toggled by the user. Some menu items are "checked" when the user selects them. When such elements are toggled "on" the :checked pseudo-class applies. While the :checked pseudo-class is dynamic in nature, and can altered by user action, since it can also be based on the presence of semantic attributes in the document, it applies to all media. For example, the :checked pseudo-class initially applies to such elements that have the HTML4 selected and checked attributes as described in Section 17.2.1 of HTML4, but of course the user can toggle "off" such elements in which case the :checked pseudo-class would no longer apply.

The :indeterminate pseudo-class

Structural pseudo-classes

Selectors introduces the concept of structural pseudo-classes to permit selection based on extra information that lies in the document tree but cannot be represented by other simple selectors or combinators.

Standalone text and other non-element nodes are not counted when calculating the position of an element in the list of children of its parent. When calculating the position of an element in the list of children of its parent, the index numbering starts at 1.

:root pseudo-class

The :root pseudo-class represents an element that is the root of the document. In HTML 4, this is always the HTML element.

:nth-child() pseudo-class

The :nth-child(an+b) pseudo-class notation represents an element that has an+b-1 siblings before it in the document tree, for any positive integer or zero value of n, and has a parent element. For values of a and b greater than zero, this effectively divides the element's children into groups of a elements (the last group taking the remainder), and selecting the bth element of each group. For example, this allows the selectors to address every other row in a table, and could be used to alternate the color of paragraph text in a cycle of four. The a and b values must be integers (positive, negative, or zero). The index of the first child of an element is 1.

In addition to this, :nth-child() can take 'odd' and 'even' as arguments instead. 'odd' has the same signification as 2n+1, and 'even' has the same signification as 2n.

The argument to :nth-child() must match the grammar below, where INTEGER matches the token [0-9]+ and the rest of the tokenization is given by the Lexical scanner in section 10.2:

nth
  : S* [ ['-'|'+']? INTEGER? {N} [ S* ['-'|'+'] S* INTEGER ]? |
         ['-'|'+']? INTEGER | {O}{D}{D} | {E}{V}{E}{N} ] S*
  ;

tr:nth-child(2n+1) /* represents every odd row of an HTML table */
tr:nth-child(odd)  /* same */
tr:nth-child(2n+0) /* represents every even row of an HTML table */
tr:nth-child(even) /* same */

/* Alternate paragraph colours in CSS */
p:nth-child(4n+1) { color: navy; }
p:nth-child(4n+2) { color: green; }
p:nth-child(4n+3) { color: maroon; }
p:nth-child(4n+4) { color: purple; }

When the value b is preceded by a negative sign, the "+" character in the expression must be removed (it is effectively replaced by the "-" character indicating the negative value of b).

:nth-child(10n-1)  /* represents the 9th, 19th, 29th, etc, element */
:nth-child(10n+9)  /* Same */
:nth-child(10n+-1) /* Syntactically invalid, and would be ignored */

When a=0, the an part need not be included (unless the b part is already omitted). When an is not included and b is non-negative, the + sign before b (when allowed) may also be omitted. In this case the syntax simplifies to :nth-child(b).

foo:nth-child(0n+5)   /* represents an element foo that is the 5th child
                         of its parent element */
foo:nth-child(5)      /* same */

When a=1, or a=-1, the 1 may be omitted from the rule.

bar:nth-child(1n+0)   /* represents all bar elements, specificity (0,1,1) */
bar:nth-child(n+0)    /* same */
bar:nth-child(n)      /* same */
bar                   /* same but lower specificity (0,0,1) */

If b=0, then every ath element is picked. In such a case, the +b (or -b) part may be omitted unless the a part is already omitted.

tr:nth-child(2n+0) /* represents every even row of an HTML table */
tr:nth-child(2n) /* same */

Whitespace is permitted after the "(", before the ")", and on either side of the "+" or "-" that separates the an and b parts when both are present.

:nth-child( 3n + 1 )
:nth-child( +3n - 2 )
:nth-child( -n+ 6)
:nth-child( +6 )

:nth-child(3 n)
:nth-child(+ 2n)
:nth-child(+ 2)

If both a and b are equal to zero, the pseudo-class represents no element in the document tree.

The value a can be negative, but only the positive values of an+b, for n≥0, may represent an element in the document tree.

html|tr:nth-child(-n+6)  /* represents the 6 first rows of XHTML tables */

:nth-last-child() pseudo-class

The :nth-last-child(an+b) pseudo-class notation represents an element that has an+b-1 siblings after it in the document tree, for any positive integer or zero value of n, and has a parent element. See :nth-child() pseudo-class for the syntax of its argument. It also accepts the 'even' and 'odd' values as arguments.

tr:nth-last-child(-n+2)    /* represents the two last rows of an HTML table */

foo:nth-last-child(odd)    /* represents all odd foo elements in their parent element,
                              counting from the last one */

:nth-of-type() pseudo-class

The :nth-of-type(an+b) pseudo-class notation represents an element that has an+b-1 siblings with the same expanded element name before it in the document tree, for any zero or positive integer value of n, and has a parent element. See :nth-child() pseudo-class for the syntax of its argument. It also accepts the 'even' and 'odd' values.

img:nth-of-type(2n+1) { float: right; }
img:nth-of-type(2n) { float: left; }

:nth-last-of-type() pseudo-class

The :nth-last-of-type(an+b) pseudo-class notation represents an element that has an+b-1 siblings with the same expanded element name after it in the document tree, for any zero or positive integer value of n, and has a parent element. See :nth-child() pseudo-class for the syntax of its argument. It also accepts the 'even' and 'odd' values.

body > h2:nth-of-type(n+2):nth-last-of-type(n+2)

body > h2:not(:first-of-type):not(:last-of-type)

:first-child pseudo-class

Same as :nth-child(1). The :first-child pseudo-class represents an element that is the first child of some other element.

div > p:first-child

<p> The last P before the note.</p>
<div class="note">
   <p> The first P inside the note.</p>
</div>

<p> The last P before the note.</p>
<div class="note">
   <h2> Note </h2>
   <p> The first P inside the note.</p>
</div>

* > a:first-child /* a is first child of any element */
a:first-child /* Same (assuming a is not the root element) */

:last-child pseudo-class

Same as :nth-last-child(1). The :last-child pseudo-class represents an element that is the last child of some other element.

ol > li:last-child

:first-of-type pseudo-class

Same as :nth-of-type(1). The :first-of-type pseudo-class represents an element that is the first sibling of its type in the list of children of its parent element.

dl dt:first-of-type

<dl>
 <dt>gigogne</dt>
 <dd>
  <dl>
   <dt>fusée</dt>
   <dd>multistage rocket</dd>
   <dt>table</dt>
   <dd>nest of tables</dd>
  </dl>
 </dd>
</dl>

:last-of-type pseudo-class

Same as :nth-last-of-type(1). The :last-of-type pseudo-class represents an element that is the last sibling of its type in the list of children of its parent element.

tr > td:last-of-type

:only-child pseudo-class

Represents an element that has a parent element and whose parent element has no other element children. Same as :first-child:last-child or :nth-child(1):nth-last-child(1), but with a lower specificity.

:only-of-type pseudo-class

Represents an element that has a parent element and whose parent element has no other element children with the same expanded element name. Same as :first-of-type:last-of-type or :nth-of-type(1):nth-last-of-type(1), but with a lower specificity.

:empty pseudo-class

The :empty pseudo-class represents an element that has no children at all. In terms of the document tree, only element nodes and content nodes (such as DOM [[DOM-LEVEL-3-CORE]] text nodes, CDATA nodes, and entity references) whose data has a non-zero length must be considered as affecting emptiness; comments, processing instructions, and other nodes must not affect whether an element is considered empty or not.

<p></p>

<foo>bar</foo>

<foo><bar>bla</bar></foo>

<foo>this is not <bar>:empty</bar></foo>

Blank

This section intentionally left blank. (This section previously defined a :contains() pseudo-class.)

The negation pseudo-class

The negation pseudo-class, :not(X), is a functional notation taking a simple selector (excluding the negation pseudo-class itself) as an argument. It represents an element that is not represented by its argument.

Negations may not be nested; :not(:not(...)) is invalid. Note also that since pseudo-elements are not simple selectors, they are not a valid argument to :not().

button:not([DISABLED])

*:not(FOO)

html|*:not(:link):not(:visited)

Default namespace declarations do not affect the argument of the negation pseudo-class unless the argument is a universal selector or a type selector.

*|*:not(*)

*|*:not(:hover)

Note: the :not() pseudo allows useless selectors to be written. For instance :not(*|*), which represents no element at all, or foo:not(bar), which is equivalent to foo but with a higher specificity.

Pseudo-elements

Pseudo-elements create abstractions about the document tree beyond those specified by the document language. For instance, document languages do not offer mechanisms to access the first letter or first line of an element's content. Pseudo-elements allow authors to refer to this otherwise inaccessible information. Pseudo-elements may also provide authors a way to refer to content that does not exist in the source document (e.g., the ::before and ::after pseudo-elements give access to generated content).

A pseudo-element is made of two colons (::) followed by the name of the pseudo-element.

This :: notation is introduced by the current document in order to establish a discrimination between pseudo-classes and pseudo-elements. For compatibility with existing style sheets, user agents must also accept the previous one-colon notation for pseudo-elements introduced in CSS levels 1 and 2 (namely, :first-line, :first-letter, :before and :after). This compatibility is not allowed for the new pseudo-elements introduced in this specification.

Only one pseudo-element may appear per selector, and if present it must appear after the sequence of simple selectors that represents the subjects of the selector. Note: A future version of this specification may allow multiple pseudo-elements per selector.

The ::first-line pseudo-element

The ::first-line pseudo-element describes the contents of the first formatted line of an element.

p::first-line { text-transform: uppercase }

Note that the length of the first line depends on a number of factors, including the width of the page, the font size, etc. Thus, an ordinary HTML paragraph such as:

<P>This is a somewhat long HTML 
paragraph that will be broken into several 
lines. The first line will be identified
by a fictional tag sequence. The other lines 
will be treated as ordinary lines in the 
paragraph.</P>

the lines of which happen to be broken as follows:

THIS IS A SOMEWHAT LONG HTML PARAGRAPH THAT
will be broken into several lines. The first
line will be identified by a fictional tag 
sequence. The other lines will be treated as 
ordinary lines in the paragraph.

This paragraph might be "rewritten" by user agents to include the fictional tag sequence for ::first-line. This fictional tag sequence helps to show how properties are inherited.

<P><P::first-line> This is a somewhat long HTML 
paragraph that </P::first-line> will be broken into several
lines. The first line will be identified 
by a fictional tag sequence. The other lines 
will be treated as ordinary lines in the 
paragraph.</P>

If a pseudo-element breaks up a real element, the desired effect can often be described by a fictional tag sequence that closes and then re-opens the element. Thus, if we mark up the previous paragraph with a span element:

<P><SPAN class="test"> This is a somewhat long HTML
paragraph that will be broken into several
lines.</SPAN> The first line will be identified
by a fictional tag sequence. The other lines 
will be treated as ordinary lines in the 
paragraph.</P>

the user agent could simulate start and end tags for span when inserting the fictional tag sequence for ::first-line.

<P><P::first-line><SPAN class="test"> This is a
somewhat long HTML
paragraph that will </SPAN></P::first-line><SPAN class="test"> be
broken into several
lines.</SPAN> The first line will be identified
by a fictional tag sequence. The other lines
will be treated as ordinary lines in the 
paragraph.</P>

First formatted line definition in CSS

In CSS, the ::first-line pseudo-element can only have an effect when attached to a block-like container such as a block box, inline-block, table-caption, or table-cell. In such a case, it refers to the first formatted line of that container.

The first formatted line of an element may occur inside a block-level descendant in the same flow (i.e., a block-level descendant that is not out-of-flow due to floating or positioning). For example, the first line of the DIV in <DIV><P>This line...</P></DIV> is the first line of the P (assuming that both P and DIV are block-level).

The first line of a table-cell or inline-block cannot be the first formatted line of an ancestor element. Thus, in <DIV><P STYLE="display: inline-block">Hello<BR>Goodbye</P> etcetera</DIV> the first formatted line of the DIV is not the line "Hello".

Note: Note that the first line of the p in this fragment: <p><br>First... doesn't contain any letters (assuming the default style for br in HTML 4). The word "First" is not on the first formatted line.

A UA should act as if the fictional start tags of the ::first-line pseudo-elements were nested just inside the innermost enclosing block-level element. (Since CSS1 and CSS2 were silent on this case, authors should not rely on this behavior.) For example, the fictional tag sequence for

<DIV>
  <P>First paragraph</P>
  <P>Second paragraph</P>
</DIV>

is

<DIV>
  <P><DIV::first-line><P::first-line>First paragraph</P::first-line></DIV::first-line></P>
  <P><P::first-line>Second paragraph</P::first-line></P>
</DIV>

The ::first-line pseudo-element is similar to an inline-level element, but with certain restrictions. The following CSS properties apply to a ::first-line pseudo-element: font properties, color property, background properties, 'word-spacing', 'letter-spacing', 'text-decoration', 'text-transform', 'line-height'. UAs may apply other properties as well.

During CSS inheritance, the portion of a child element that occurs on the first line only inherits properties applicable to the ::first-line pseudo-element from the ::first-line pseudo-element. For all other properties inheritence is from the non-pseudo-element parent of the first line pseudo element. (The portion of a child element that does not occur on the first line always inherits from the parent of that child.)

The ::first-letter pseudo-element

The ::first-letter pseudo-element represents the first letter of an element, if it is not preceded by any other content (such as images or inline tables) on its line. The ::first-letter pseudo-element may be used for "initial caps" and "drop caps", which are common typographical effects.

Punctuation (i.e, characters defined in Unicode in the "open" (Ps), "close" (Pe), "initial" (Pi). "final" (Pf) and "other" (Po) punctuation classes), that precedes or follows the first letter should be included. [[!UNICODE]]

The ::first-letter also applies if the first letter is in fact a digit, e.g., the "6" in "67 million dollars is a lot of money."

Note: In some cases the ::first-letter pseudo-element should include more than just the first non-punctuation character on a line. For example, combining characters must be kept with their base character. Additionally, some languages may have specific rules about how to treat certain letter combinations. The UA definition of ::first-letter should include at least the default grapheme cluster as defined by UAX29 and may include more than that as appropriate. In Dutch, for example, if the letter combination "ij" appears at the beginning of an element, both letters should be considered within the ::first-letter pseudo-element. [[UAX29]]

If the letters that would form the ::first-letter are not in the same element, such as "‘T" in <p>‘<em>T..., the UA may create a ::first-letter pseudo-element from one of the elements, both elements, or simply not create a pseudo-element.

Similarly, if the first letter(s) of the block are not at the start of the line (for example due to bidirectional reordering), then the UA need not create the pseudo-element(s).

p { color: red; font-size: 12pt }
p::first-letter { color: green; font-size: 200% }
p::first-line { color: blue }

<P>Some text that ends up on two lines</P>

<P>
<P::first-line>
<P::first-letter> 
S 
</P::first-letter>ome text that 
</P::first-line> 
ends up on two lines 
</P>

The first letter must occur on the first formatted line. For example, in this HTML fragment: <p><br>First... the first line doesn't contain any letters and ::first-letter doesn't match anything (assuming the default style for br in HTML 4). In particular, it does not match the "F" of "First."

Application in CSS

In CSS, the ::first-letter pseudo-element applies to block-like containers such as block, list-item, table-cell, table-caption, and inline-block elements. Note: A future version of this specification may allow this pseudo-element to apply to more display types.

The ::first-letter pseudo-element can be used with all such elements that contain text, or that have a descendant in the same flow that contains text. A UA should act as if the fictional start tag of the ::first-letter pseudo-element is just before the first text of the element, even if that first text is in a descendant.

<div>
<p>The first text.

<div>
<p><div::first-letter><p::first-letter>T</...></...>he first text.

In CSS the first letter of a table-cell or inline-block cannot be the first letter of an ancestor element. Thus, in <DIV><P STYLE="display: inline-block">Hello<BR>Goodbye</P> etcetera</DIV> the first letter of the DIV is not the letter "H". In fact, the DIV doesn't have a first letter.

If an element is a list item ('display: list-item'), the ::first-letter applies to the first letter in the principal box after the marker. UAs may ignore ::first-letter on list items with 'list-style-position: inside'. If an element has ::before or ::after content, the ::first-letter applies to the first letter of the element including that content.

In CSS a ::first-line pseudo-element is similar to an inline-level element if its 'float' property is 'none'; otherwise, it is similar to a floated element. The following properties that apply to ::first-letter pseudo-elements: font properties, 'text-decoration', 'text-transform', 'letter-spacing', 'word-spacing' (when appropriate), 'line-height', 'float', 'vertical-align' (only if 'float' is 'none'), margin properties, padding properties, border properties, color property, background properties. UAs may apply other properties as well. To allow UAs to render a typographically correct drop cap or initial cap, the UA may choose a line-height, width and height based on the shape of the letter, unlike for normal elements.

p { line-height: 1.1 }
p::first-letter { font-size: 3em; font-weight: normal }
span { font-weight: bold }
...
<p><span>Het hemelsche</span> gerecht heeft zich ten lange lesten<br>
Erbarremt over my en mijn benaeuwde vesten<br>
En arme burgery, en op mijn volcx gebed<br>
En dagelix geschrey de bange stad ontzet.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN">
<HTML>
 <HEAD>
  <TITLE>Drop cap initial letter</TITLE>
  <STYLE type="text/css">
   P               { font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.2 }
   P::first-letter { font-size: 200%; font-weight: bold; float: left }
   SPAN            { text-transform: uppercase }
  </STYLE>
 </HEAD>
 <BODY>
  <P><SPAN>The first</SPAN> few words of an article
    in The Economist.</P>
 </BODY>
</HTML>

<P>
<SPAN>
<P::first-letter>
T
</P::first-letter>he first
</SPAN> 
few words of an article in the Economist.
</P>

In order to achieve traditional drop caps formatting, user agents may approximate font sizes, for example to align baselines. Also, the glyph outline may be taken into account when formatting.

Blank

This section intentionally left blank. (This section previously defined a ::selection pseudo-element.)

The ::before and ::after pseudo-elements

The ::before and ::after pseudo-elements can be used to describe generated content before or after an element's content. They are explained in CSS 2.1 [[!CSS21]].

When the ::first-letter and ::first-line pseudo-elements are applied to an element having content generated using ::before or ::after, they apply to the first letter or line of the element including the generated content.

Combinators

Descendant combinator

At times, authors may want selectors to describe an element that is the descendant of another element in the document tree (e.g., "an EM element that is contained within an H1 element"). Descendant combinators express such a relationship. A descendant combinator is whitespace that separates two sequences of simple selectors. A selector of the form "A B" represents an element B that is an arbitrary descendant of some ancestor element A.

h1 em

<h1>This <span class="myclass">headline
is <em>very</em> important</span></h1>

div * p

div p *[href]

Child combinators

A child combinator describes a childhood relationship between two elements. A child combinator is made of the "greater-than sign" (U+003E, >) character and separates two sequences of simple selectors.

body > p

div ol>li p

For information on selecting the first child of an element, please see the section on the :first-child pseudo-class above.

Sibling combinators

There are two different sibling combinators: the next-sibling combinator and the following-sibling combinator. In both cases, non-element nodes (e.g. text between elements) are ignored when considering adjacency of elements.

Next-sibling combinator

The next-sibling combinator is made of the "plus sign" (U+002B, +) character that separates two sequences of simple selectors. The elements represented by the two sequences share the same parent in the document tree and the element represented by the first sequence immediately precedes the element represented by the second one.

math + p

h1.opener + h2

Following-sibling combinator

The following-sibling combinator is made of the "tilde" (U+007E, ~) character that separates two sequences of simple selectors. The elements represented by the two sequences share the same parent in the document tree and the element represented by the first sequence precedes (not necessarily immediately) the element represented by the second one.

h1 ~ pre

<h1>Definition of the function a</h1>
<p>Function a(x) has to be applied to all figures in the table.</p>
<pre>function a(x) = 12x/13.5</pre>

Calculating a selector's specificity

A selector's specificity is calculated as follows:

• count the number of ID selectors in the selector (= a)
• count the number of class selectors, attributes selectors, and pseudo-classes in the selector (= b)
• count the number of type selectors and pseudo-elements in the selector (= c)
• ignore the universal selector

Selectors inside the negation pseudo-class are counted like any other, but the negation itself does not count as a pseudo-class.

Concatenating the three numbers a-b-c (in a number system with a large base) gives the specificity.

*               /* a=0 b=0 c=0 -> specificity =   0 */
LI              /* a=0 b=0 c=1 -> specificity =   1 */
UL LI           /* a=0 b=0 c=2 -> specificity =   2 */
UL OL+LI        /* a=0 b=0 c=3 -> specificity =   3 */
H1 + *[REL=up]  /* a=0 b=1 c=1 -> specificity =  11 */
UL OL LI.red    /* a=0 b=1 c=3 -> specificity =  13 */
LI.red.level    /* a=0 b=2 c=1 -> specificity =  21 */
#x34y           /* a=1 b=0 c=0 -> specificity = 100 */
#s12:not(FOO)   /* a=1 b=0 c=1 -> specificity = 101 */

Note: Repeated occurrances of the same simple selector are allowed and do increase specificity.

Note: the specificity of the styles specified in an HTML style attribute is described in CSS 2.1. [[!CSS21]].

The grammar of Selectors

Grammar

The grammar below defines the syntax of Selectors. It is globally LL(1) and can be locally LL(2) (but note that most UAs should not use it directly, since it doesn't express the parsing conventions). The format of the productions is optimized for human consumption and some shorthand notations beyond Yacc (see [[!YACC]]) are used:

• *: 0 or more
• +: 1 or more
• ?: 0 or 1
• |: separates alternatives
• [ ]: grouping

The productions are:

selectors_group
  : selector [ COMMA S* selector ]*
  ;

selector
  : simple_selector_sequence [ combinator simple_selector_sequence ]*
  ;

combinator
  /* combinators can be surrounded by whitespace */
  : PLUS S* | GREATER S* | TILDE S* | S+
  ;

simple_selector_sequence
  : [ type_selector | universal ]
    [ HASH | class | attrib | pseudo | negation ]*
  | [ HASH | class | attrib | pseudo | negation ]+
  ;

type_selector
  : [ namespace_prefix ]? element_name
  ;

namespace_prefix
  : [ IDENT | '*' ]? '|'
  ;

element_name
  : IDENT
  ;

universal
  : [ namespace_prefix ]? '*'
  ;

class
  : '.' IDENT
  ;

attrib
  : '[' S* [ namespace_prefix ]? IDENT S*
        [ [ PREFIXMATCH |
            SUFFIXMATCH |
            SUBSTRINGMATCH |
            '=' |
            INCLUDES |
            DASHMATCH ] S* [ IDENT | STRING ] S*
        ]? ']'
  ;

pseudo
  /* '::' starts a pseudo-element, ':' a pseudo-class */
  /* Exceptions: :first-line, :first-letter, :before and :after. */
  /* Note that pseudo-elements are restricted to one per selector and */
  /* occur only in the last simple_selector_sequence. */
  : ':' ':'? [ IDENT | functional_pseudo ]
  ;

functional_pseudo
  : FUNCTION S* expression ')'
  ;

expression
  /* In CSS3, the expressions are identifiers, strings, */
  /* or of the form "an+b" */
  : [ [ PLUS | '-' | DIMENSION | NUMBER | STRING | IDENT ] S* ]+
  ;

negation
  : NOT S* negation_arg S* ')'
  ;

negation_arg
  : type_selector | universal | HASH | class | attrib | pseudo
  ;

Lexical scanner

The following is the tokenizer, written in Flex (see [[!FLEX]]) notation. The tokenizer is case-insensitive.

The two occurrences of "\377" represent the highest character number that current versions of Flex can deal with (decimal 255). They should be read as "\4177777" (decimal 1114111), which is the highest possible code point in Unicode/ISO-10646. [[!UNICODE]]

%option case-insensitive

ident     [-]?{nmstart}{nmchar}*
name      {nmchar}+
nmstart   [_a-z]|{nonascii}|{escape}
nonascii  [^\0-\177]
unicode   \\[0-9a-f]{1,6}(\r\n|[ \n\r\t\f])?
escape    {unicode}|\\[^\n\r\f0-9a-f]
nmchar    [_a-z0-9-]|{nonascii}|{escape}
num       [0-9]+|[0-9]*\.[0-9]+
string    {string1}|{string2}
string1   \"([^\n\r\f\\"]|\\{nl}|{nonascii}|{escape})*\"
string2   \'([^\n\r\f\\']|\\{nl}|{nonascii}|{escape})*\'
invalid   {invalid1}|{invalid2}
invalid1  \"([^\n\r\f\\"]|\\{nl}|{nonascii}|{escape})*
invalid2  \'([^\n\r\f\\']|\\{nl}|{nonascii}|{escape})*
nl        \n|\r\n|\r|\f
w         [ \t\r\n\f]*

D         d|\\0{0,4}(44|64)(\r\n|[ \t\r\n\f])?
E         e|\\0{0,4}(45|65)(\r\n|[ \t\r\n\f])?
N         n|\\0{0,4}(4e|6e)(\r\n|[ \t\r\n\f])?|\\n
O         o|\\0{0,4}(4f|6f)(\r\n|[ \t\r\n\f])?|\\o
T         t|\\0{0,4}(54|74)(\r\n|[ \t\r\n\f])?|\\t
V         v|\\0{0,4}(58|78)(\r\n|[ \t\r\n\f])?|\\v

%%

[ \t\r\n\f]+     return S;

"~="             return INCLUDES;
"|="             return DASHMATCH;
"^="             return PREFIXMATCH;
"$="             return SUFFIXMATCH;
"*="             return SUBSTRINGMATCH;
{ident}          return IDENT;
{string}         return STRING;
{ident}"("       return FUNCTION;
{num}            return NUMBER;
"#"{name}        return HASH;
{w}"+"           return PLUS;
{w}">"           return GREATER;
{w}","           return COMMA;
{w}"~"           return TILDE;
":"{N}{O}{T}"("  return NOT;
@{ident}         return ATKEYWORD;
{invalid}        return INVALID;
{num}%           return PERCENTAGE;
{num}{ident}     return DIMENSION;
"<!--"           return CDO;
"-->"            return CDC;

\/\*[^*]*\*+([^/*][^*]*\*+)*\/                    /* ignore comments */

.                return *yytext;

Profiles

Each specification using Selectors must define the subset of Selectors it allows and excludes, and describe the local meaning of all the components of that subset.

Non normative examples:

h1 a[name]

Conformance and requirements

This section defines conformance with the present specification only.

The inability of a user agent to implement part of this specification due to the limitations of a particular device (e.g., non interactive user agents will probably not implement dynamic pseudo-classes because they make no sense without interactivity) does not imply non-conformance.

All specifications reusing Selectors must contain a Profile listing the subset of Selectors it accepts or excludes, and describing the constraints it adds to the current specification.

Invalidity is caused by a parsing error, e.g. an unrecognized token or a token which is not allowed at the current parsing point.

User agents must observe the rules for handling parsing errors:

• a simple selector containing an undeclared namespace prefix is invalid
• a selector containing an invalid simple selector, an invalid combinator or an invalid token is invalid.
• a group of selectors containing an invalid selector is invalid.

Specifications reusing Selectors must define how to handle parsing errors. (In the case of CSS, the entire rule in which the selector is used is dropped.)

Tests

This specification has a test suite allowing user agents to verify their basic conformance to the specification. This test suite does not pretend to be exhaustive and does not cover all possible combined cases of Selectors.

Acknowledgements

The CSS working group would like to thank everyone who has sent comments on this specification over the years.

In particular, the working group would like to extend special thanks to Donna McManus, Justin Baker, Joel Sklar, and Molly Ives Brower who performed the final editorial review of the last call draft. The working group would also like to thank Adam Kuehn, Boris Zbarsky, David Perrell, Elliotte Harold, Matthew Raymond, Ruud Steltenpool, Patrick Garies, Anton Prowse, and the W3C Internationalization Working Group for their last call comments and kind words.

References

Normative References

Informative References