using_css_selectors.md

Using CSS selectors

Xpath is very powerful query language. But sometimes, you do not need this power. You need just to grab some page in simple way - using css selectors. Css selectors are widely used. They are simple.

You need additional library called xparse/css-expression-translator

Install it via composer:

composer require xparse/css-expression-translator

Configure element finder

  $finder->setExpressionTranslator(new CssExpressionTranslator());

Example

Here is full working example:

  require 'vendor/autoload.php';

  use Xparse\CssExpressionTranslator\CssExpressionTranslator;
  use Xparse\ElementFinder\ElementFinder;


  $finder = new ElementFinder('<div>
      <a href="#page">123</a>
      <a href="#second" class="test">321<span>ad</span></a>
</div>', ElementFinder::DOCUMENT_HTML, new CssExpressionTranslator());
  

  # 321<span>ad</span>
  echo $finder->content('a.test')->first();

How it works?

This library build on top of the symfony/css-selector https://github.com/symfony/css-selector

How to select attributes with css?

Add space before attribute name.

  $finder->attributes('a @href');
  $finder->attributes('a.test @class');
  
  // slect node text  
  $finder->value('a.test node()'); 

Limits

There are some limits.

• Xpath is more powerful than css.
• you cant select attributes with or operator
• fetch function result a concat('text:', text())