On 7/6/07, Sander <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hello,
I'm not sure if this has been proposed yet (can hardly believe it hasn't).
But I couldn't find it in the specs so I just give it a go anyway.
I'd like to see a getElementsByAttr method. It would be quite similar as
the getElementsByClassName method but with an extra argument:
getElementsByAttr(attribute_name, value)
For attributes that can have more than one value (either seperated by
spaces or commas) the value argument may be a space(/comma) seperated string
or an array, similar to getElementsByClassName. If value is not defined of
perhaps a wildcard ("*") the method should return all nodes that have the
particular attribute, no matter what its value is.
The method overlaps with both getElementsByClassName, getElementsByTagName
and getElementById, as these filter on attribute value as well, but it still
adds extra opportunities.
cheers,
Sander
I personally prefer the DOM 3 XPath evaluate() method, which is implemented
at least by Mozilla on the document object. Not sure about other UAs.
However, AFAICR, XPath doesn't meet all use cases, such as space-separated
token lists, like @class.
http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-XPath/xpath.html#XPathEvaluator
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/DOM:document.evaluate
Since these APIs are spread out over various specifications, it's hard to
guess what common browsers are going to support in the future. It would be
nice if HTML5 informatively notes these other APIs that may be supported
(XMLHttpRequest also fits in this category)
--
Jon Barnett
