Nathan,
'identifier' cannot contain the plain 'space' (ascii 32) character, it
MUST be escaped as '\x20', see:
http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/syndata.html#value-def-identifier
'string' can contain the 'space' character in both escaped and unescaped forms.
The meaning of the 'space' character in a 'string' depends from the
realm of it's value, in the case of the 'title' attribute it has no
special meaning but in the case of the 'class' attribute it is
considered a separator (of a classList).
As for checking 'identifier' I have had the following regular
expressions in NWMatcher 1.2.x:
// CSS identifier syntax
identifier = '(?:-?[_a-zA-Z]{1}[-\\w]*|[^\\x00-\\xa0]+|\\\\.+)+',
'identifier' matches the character values (including utf-8) used for
things such ID, CLASS names.
Examples of invalid identifiers:
.8mm
#--test
examples of invalid strings (missing quotes):
a[class=tel:]
a[href=#]
example of valid string but invalid URL:
a[href="the bad.html"]
Hope this helps differentiate the cases outlined.
--
Diego
On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 12:04 AM, Nathan Sweet <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>If you want elegance, simplicity, and specificity then your best bet is
>>> XPath.
> If Diego Perini is listening in to this conversation I'd love to hear his
> thoughts, I know this is his area of expertise, and I know he's
> very opinionated about where the DOM is headed. I'm not entirely sure I
> understand you Austin, are you saying utilize native XPath methods over
> traditional DOM methods, because that debate ended a couple of years ago, or
> are you saying I should use XPath completely, as what is exposed to the end
> user? If the latter, than your idea is intriguing, and not one I would have
> considered.
>
> On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 12:46 PM, Cheney, Austin
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> > So this presents an interesting dilemma
>>
>> The dilemma is far more complicated than merely that. You are using one
>> means of selection in a context for which it was never intended. That is
>> why it is incomplete and error prone and it's not because of
>> short-sightedness in CSS. This is why jQuery has to temper its use of CSS
>> selectors as a query means with the addition of a large number of methods to
>> complement the short comings of this convention.
>>
>> If you want elegance, simplicity, and specificity then your best bet is
>> XPath. This is the only thing XPath was designed for. A simple XPath
>> expression can give you a higher degree of specificity than a complex CSS
>> selection with a whole host of unnecessary methods. If that option is
>> either unavailable or undesirable you can use the clunky DOM methods, which
>> are neither the most elegant nor fastest solution, as they do their job with
>> clarity.
>>
>> If at the end of the day you still want to use some out of context
>> convention then be prepared to make some hard decisions that come with
>> unpleasantly burdensome consequences that extend beyond implementation
>> questions.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Austin Cheney, CISSP
>>
>> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On
>> Behalf Of Nathan Sweet
>> Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2011 2:12 PM
>> To: [email protected]
>> Subject: Re: [JSMentors] spaces in attribute values
>>
>> >>As for ANY CSS property value, that is more than one word you should use
>> >> quotes, like font names. That this would apply to selectors too.
>>
>> Thanks Poetro,
>> So this presents an interesting dilemma, it really is more of a code
>> design question whether I should go above and beyond the call of duty and
>> except identifiers with white space in them, it would actually be easier for
>> me to do so, but would this be lazy? I think I'm good for now, but if
>> anybody is really passionate about the philosophy of arbitrarily
>> implementing the CSS spec as a mode of selecting elements in javascript, I'd
>> be interested to hear their thoughts.
>> -Nate
>> On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 9:08 AM, Poetro <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Sorry, messed the the order
>>
>> >> Attribute values must be CSS identifiers or strings.
>> >
>> > See the specification for identifiers
>> > http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/syndata.html#value-def-identifier
>> >
>> >> In CSS, identifiers (including element names, classes, and IDs in
>> >> selectors)
>> >> can contain only the characters [a-zA-Z0-9] and ISO 10646 characters
>> >> U+00A0
>> >> and higher, plus the hyphen (-) and the underscore (_); they cannot
>> >> start with a
>> >> digit, two hyphens, or a hyphen followed by a digit.
>> --
>> Poetro
>>
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