generate-selectors

Version 1.0.0.

generateSelectors is function which produces an shell of empty CSS selectors from markup. It is intended to be used in front-end development workflows. It also exists as a Gulp plugin.

Usage

generateSelectors accepts a single options parameter and returns a string. The result is intended to be used as the content of a stylesheet file.

stylesheet = generateSelectors( options )

Options

• ids (Boolean|RegExp|Function) Instructions for generating id specifiers. Defaults to true.
• classNames (Boolean|RegExp|Function) Instructions for generating class name specifiers. Defaults to true.
• tagNames (Boolean|RegExp|Function) Instructions for generating tag names specifiers. Defaults to generateSelectors.ignoreDefaultTagNames.
• styles(false|String) The existing stylesheet contents. Use of this option prevents both existing stylesheet content from being lost and duplicate selectors from being generated. Defaults to false, which assumes that an entirely new stylesheet is to be generated.
• markup (String) The markup from which to generate the selectors. Required.

Instructions for types of specifiers

• Booleans. true indicates to include all specifiers of this type, false indicates to skip this type of specifiers.
• Regular Expressions include or exclude specific specifiers via the .match() method. For example, /^utility-/ would require that any specifiers start with 'utility-' in order to be included.
• Functions include or exclude specific specifiers by acting as predicates. They accept the specifier as as string and return a boolean, true to include or false to exclude.

Behavior

generateSelectors combines all specifiers which it finds on an element into a single, compound selector. For example, <ul class="navigation" id="main-navigation"> might result in ul#main-navigation.navigation.

Default ignored tag names

The built-in predicate function generateSelectors.ignoreDefaultTagNames is controlled by the array generateSelectors.defaultIgnoredTagNames. If, for example, you wanted to add ul and li to the list of ignored tag names, you could write:

generateSelectors.defaultIgnoredTagNames = generateSelectors.defaultIgnoredTagNames.concat ( 'ul', 'li' )