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CSS as a Query Language

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Re: CSS as a Query Language

#2

Post by efortis »

Not sure I follow the scenario this would solve.

For instance, currently you can conditionally change a parent based on its children. For example, this `pre` could either have 16px or 0px of padding. Zero when its direct child is a `code` element.

  pre {
    padding: 16px;

    &:has(> code) {
      padding: 0;
    }
  }

Re: CSS as a Query Language

#3

Post by k1m »

I find CSS selectors a lot easier to write than XPath. I recently gave a talk on how PHP's new DOM API makes working with HTML and CSS selectors natively very easy (previously you had to convert CSS to XPath).[1]

It's a shame that because CSS is still primarily for browser use and styling, we don't get nice things like the ability to select based on text content like we can with XPath. My understanding is that this was proposed but didn't make it into the spec because it could lead to performance issues in a browser rendering context.

[1] https://speakerdeck.com/keyvan/parsing-html-with-php-8-dot-4...

Re: CSS as a Query Language

#4

Post by [deleted] »

k1m wrote: post #3

I find CSS selectors a lot easier to write than XPath. I recently gave a talk on how PHP's new DOM API makes working with HTML and CSS selectors natively very easy (previously you had to convert CSS to XPath).[1] It's a shame that because CSS is still primarily for browser use and styling, we don't get nice things like the ability to select based on text content like we can with XPath. My understanding is that this w…

[deleted]

Re: CSS as a Query Language

#5

Post by zerocrates »

k1m wrote: post #3

I find CSS selectors a lot easier to write than XPath. I recently gave a talk on how PHP's new DOM API makes working with HTML and CSS selectors natively very easy (previously you had to convert CSS to XPath).[1] It's a shame that because CSS is still primarily for browser use and styling, we don't get nice things like the ability to select based on text content like we can with XPath. My understanding is that this w…

Yeah, querySelector/querySelectorAll are totally widespread in client-side, it's nice to finally have them in PHP's newer DOM. Definitely what people are used to doing.

Re: CSS as a Query Language

#6

Post by tadfisher »

efortis wrote: post #2

Not sure I follow the scenario this would solve. For instance, currently you can conditionally change a parent based on its children. For example, this `pre` could either have 16px or 0px of padding. Zero when its direct child is a `code` element. pre { padding: 16px; &:has(> code) { padding: 0; } }

The article describes a syntax for modifying the underlying data (adding new child elements or attributes to the DOM) for matching selectors, not resolving style changes in a single pass like you've shown.

Re: CSS as a Query Language

#8

Post by capitainenemo »

tadfisher wrote: post #6
efortis wrote: post #2

Not sure I follow the scenario this would solve. For instance, currently you can conditionally change a parent based on its children. For example, this `pre` could either have 16px or 0px of padding. Zero when its direct child is a `code` element. pre { padding: 16px; &:has(> code) { padding: 0; } }

The article describes a syntax for modifying the underlying data (adding new child elements or attributes to the DOM) for matching selectors, not resolving style changes in a single pass like you've shown.

I suspect they are replying to this part of the article: "What you actually want to say is: “an element is effectively-dark if it has data-theme=”dark”, or if it has an effectively-dark ancestor with no effectively-light ancestor in between.” That’s a recursive relational definition. CSS cannot express it. CSSLog can:"

The entire article doesn't seem to mention the existence of :has() which is rather surprising given how recently it was written. Not even in the footnotes.

Re: CSS as a Query Language

#10

Post by werdnapk »

zerocrates wrote: post #5
k1m wrote: post #3

I find CSS selectors a lot easier to write than XPath. I recently gave a talk on how PHP's new DOM API makes working with HTML and CSS selectors natively very easy (previously you had to convert CSS to XPath).[1] It's a shame that because CSS is still primarily for browser use and styling, we don't get nice things like the ability to select based on text content like we can with XPath. My understanding is that this w…

Yeah, querySelector/querySelectorAll are totally widespread in client-side, it's nice to finally have them in PHP's newer DOM. Definitely what people are used to doing.

document.evaluate is also widespread client-side.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Document/ev...

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