CSS selector by inline style attribute

html css css-selectors inline-styles
AgelessEssence picture AgelessEssence · Dec 8, 2011 · Viewed 90k times · Source

Is there a CSS selector to select this element by its inline style attribute value?

<div style='display:block'>...</div>

something like

div[cssAttribute=cssValue]

Answer

BoltClock picture BoltClock · Dec 8, 2011

The inline style attribute is no different to any other HTML attribute and can be matched with a substring attribute selector:

div[style*="display:block"]

It is for this very reason however that it's extremely fragile. As attribute selectors don't support regular expressions, you can only perform exact substring matches of the attribute value. For instance, if you have a space somewhere in the attribute value, like this:

<div style='display: block'>...</div>

It won't match until you change your selector to accommodate the space. And then it will stop matching values that don't contain the space, unless you include all the permutations, ad nauseam. But if you're working with a document in which the inline style declarations themselves are unlikely to change at all, you should be fine.

Note also that this is not at all selecting elements by their actual specified, computed or used values as reflected in the DOM. That is not possible with CSS selectors.

Related questions

Using CSS :before and :after pseudo-elements with inline CSS?

I'm making an HTML email signature with inline CSS (i.e. CSS in style attributes), and I am curious as to whether it's possible to use the :before and :after pseudo-elements. If so, how would I implement something like this …

Read More
CSS Pseudo-classes with inline styles

Is it possible to have pseudo-classes using inline styles? Example: <a href="http://www.google.com" style="hover:text-decoration:none;">Google</a> I know the above HTML won't work but is there something similar that will? …

Read More
CSS selector for element within element with inline style?

Is there a CSS selector to target elements with inline styles? So can I target the first span but not the 2nd with CSS only? If not, can this be done with jQuery? http://jsfiddle.net/TYCNE/ <p style="…

Read More