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
    LightFace:  Facebook Lightbox for MooTools

    One of the web components I've always loved has been Facebook's modal dialog.  This "lightbox" isn't like others:  no dark overlay, no obnoxious animating to size, and it doesn't try to do "too much."  With Facebook's dialog in mind, I've created LightFace:  a Facebook lightbox...

  • By
    I’m an Impostor

    This is the hardest thing I've ever had to write, much less admit to myself.  I've written resignation letters from jobs I've loved, I've ended relationships, I've failed at a host of tasks, and let myself down in my life.  All of those feelings were very...

Incredible Demos

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!