Summary

Attribute selectors select an element using the presence of a given attribute or attribute value.

[attr]
Represents an element with an attribute name of attr.
[attr=value]
Represents an element with an attribute name of attr and whose value is exactly "value".
[attr~=value]
Represents an element with an attribute name of attr whose value is a whitespace-separated list of words, one of which is exactly "value".
[attr|=value]
Represents an element with an attribute name of attr. Its value can be exactly “value” or can begin with “value” immediately followed by “-” (U+002D). It can be used for language subcode matches.
[attr^=value]
Represents an element with an attribute name of attr and whose value is prefixed by "value".
[attr$=value]
Represents an element with an attribute name of attr and whose value is suffixed by "value".
[attr*=value]
Represents an element with an attribute name of attr and whose value contains at least one occurrence of string "value" as substring.
[attr operator value i]
Adding an i (or I) before the closing bracket causes the value to be compared case-insensitively (for characters within the ASCII range).

Example

/* All spans with a "lang" attribute are bold */
span[lang] {font-weight:bold;}
 
/* All spans in Portuguese are green */
span[lang="pt"] {color:green;}

/* All spans in US English are blue  */
span[lang~="en-us"] {color: blue;}

/* Any span in Chinese is red, matches
   simplified (zh-CN) or traditional (zh-TW) */
span[lang|="zh"] {color: red;}

/* All internal links have a gold background */
a[href^="#"] {background-color:gold}

/* All links to urls ending in ".cn" are red */
a[href$=".cn"] {color: red;}

/* All links with "example" in the url have a grey background */
a[href*="example"] {background-color: #CCCCCC;}

/* All email inputs have a blue border */
/* This matches any capitalization of
   "email", e.g. "email", "EMAIL", "eMaIL", etc. */
input[type="email" i] {border-color: blue;}
<div class="hello-example">
    <a href="http://example.com">English:</a>
    <span lang="en-us en-gb en-au en-nz">Hello World!</span>
</div>
<div class="hello-example">
    <a href="#portuguese">Portuguese:</a>
    <span lang="pt">Olá Mundo!</span>
</div>
<div class="hello-example">
    <a href="http://example.cn">Chinese (Simplified):</a>
    <span lang="zh-CN">世界您好!</span>
</div>
<div class="hello-example">
    <a href="http://example.cn">Chinese (Traditional):</a>
    <span lang="zh-TW">世界您好!</span>
</div>

Specifications

Specification Status Comment
Selectors Level 4
The definition of 'attribute selectors' in that specification.
Working Draft Added modifier for ASCII case-insensitive attribute value selection.
Selectors Level 3
The definition of 'attribute selectors' in that specification.
Recommendation  
CSS Level 2 (Revision 1)
The definition of 'attribute selectors' in that specification.
Recommendation Initial definition

Browser compatibility

Feature Chrome Firefox (Gecko) Internet Explorer Opera Safari
Basic support (Yes) 1.0 (1.7 or earlier) 7 9 3
Case-insensitive modifier 49.0 47.0 (47.0) ? ? 9
Feature Android Chrome for Android Firefox Mobile (Gecko) IE Mobile Opera Mobile Safari Mobile Chrome for Android
Basic support ? (Yes) 1.0 (1) ? ? ? (Yes)
Case-insensitive modifier ? 49.0 47.0 (47.0) ? ? 9 49.0

See also

Document Tags and Contributors

 Last updated by: cvrebert,