Locating tag by its text using css

Question

How would you get the following tag using CSS?

<p>You can only use the text inside the tag</p>

As in xpath I'd use the following:

//p[contains(text(), "inside the tag")

PS: I can't close the xpath, it tries to auto complete with code... :S

I don't believe this is possible with pure CSS. – Geoff May 14 '09 at 18:58 — Geoff, May 14 '09 at 18:58

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered May 14 '09 at 18:58

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I believe CSS3 selectors can only filter attributes, not the text within tags. So you could do something like a[href~="aspx"] to match links to aspx pages, but that's as far as content-based matching can go.

For what you want to do, you'll probably have to use javascript or server-side processing.

Have a look at quirksmode and W3 for more information.

answered May 14 '09 at 18:58

John G

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I'm almost sure that css selector exists. Thanks for the recommendations but I'd like to use the CSS selector as a Selenium locator, so only pure CSS can be used... – user104966 May 14 '09 at 19:19

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 21 '11 at 10:54

3

This is what I was looking for!

p:contains("inside the tag")

edited Dec 21 '11 at 10:54

BoltClock

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answered Jun 04 '09 at 20:07

user104966

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@mateusza: As of today, none of them do. `:contains()` was dropped from the CSS3 spec and we haven't seen it return in the CSS4 drafts. jQuery and Selenium *do* implement it, though. See [this answer](http://stackoverflow.com/a/4781167/106224). Since the OP said he's using Selenium, this will work. It just won't work in a stylesheet. – BoltClock Dec 21 '11 at 10:56

Locating tag by its text using css

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