Case Insensitive CSS Attribute Selector

By  on  

CSS selectors never cease to amaze me in how powerful they can be in matching complex patterns. Most of that flexibility is in parent/child/sibling relationships, very seldomly in value matching. Consider my surprise when I learned that CSS allows matching attribute values regardless off case!

Adding a {space}i to the attribute selector brackets will make the attribute value search case insensitive:

/* case sensitive, only matches "example" */
[class=example] {
  background: pink;
}

/* case insensitive, matches "example", "eXampLe", etc. */
[class=example i] {
  background: lightblue;
}

The use cases for this i flag are likely very limited, especially if this flag is knew knowledge for you and you're used to a standard lower-case standard. A loose CSS classname standard will have and would continue to lead to problems, so use this case insensitivity flag sparingly!

Recent Features

  • By
    fetch API

    One of the worst kept secrets about AJAX on the web is that the underlying API for it, XMLHttpRequest, wasn't really made for what we've been using it for.  We've done well to create elegant APIs around XHR but we know we can do better.  Our effort to...

  • By
    CSS 3D Folding Animation

    Google Plus provides loads of inspiration for front-end developers, especially when it comes to the CSS and JavaScript wonders they create. Last year I duplicated their incredible PhotoStack effect with both MooTools and pure CSS; this time I'm going to duplicate...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Create a Simple News Scroller Using MooTools, Part I:  The Basics

    News scroller have been around forever on the internet. Why? Because they're usually classy and effective. Over the next few weeks, we'll be taking a simple scroller and making it into a flexible, portable class. We have to crawl before we...

  • By
    MooTools TextOverlap Plugin

    Developers everywhere seem to be looking for different ways to make use of JavaScript libraries. Some creations are extremely practical, others aren't. This one may be more on the "aren't" side but used correctly, my TextOverlap plugin could add another interesting design element...

Discussion

  1. I just used this in JavaScript to find elements based on title attributes:

    let testEntries = document.querySelectorAll('[title^="${search}" i]');
    

    Exactly what I was looking for, thanks!

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!