How to select elements by data attribute using CSS? Last Updated : 11 Jul, 2025 Comments Improve Suggest changes Like Article Like Report CSS provides a way to select HTML elements based on attributes and their values. This can be extremely helpful for targeting elements in a flexible and specific way. This enables fine-tuned control over styling elements in a webpage.Here are the different ways to select elements using attribute selectors in CSS:SelectorDescription[attribute]Selects elements with the specified attribute.[attribute="value"]Selects elements with the specified attribute and exact value.[attribute~="value"]Selects elements with an attribute value that contains the specified word.[attribute|="value"]Selects the elements with the specified attribute which starts with the specified value.[attribute^="value"]Selects elements where the attribute value begins with the specified value.[attribute$="value"]Selects elements where the attribute value ends with the specified value.[attribute*="value"]Selects elements where the attribute value contains the specified value.Examples of CSS Attribute SelectorsBelow, we'll demonstrate how these selectors can be used to style HTML elements. We'll show the code as well as the corresponding output to help clarify how each selector works.Example 1: Selecting Elements with a Specific AttributeIn this example, we use the [target] attribute selector to style <a> elements that have the target attribute, regardless of its value. html <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title> Attribute selector in CSS </title> <style> a[target] { background-color: yellow; } a { font-size: 20px; } </style> </head> <body style = "text-align:center;"> <h1 style = "color:green;" > GeeksForGeeks </h1> <a href="https://www.geeksforgeeks.org//" target="_blank"> geeksforgeeks.org </a> <br><br> <a href="https://www.google.com//" > google.com </a> </body> </html> Output:Example 2: Selecting Elements with a Specific Attribute and ValueThis example demonstrates how to target <a> elements that have the target attribute with the value _top. We also change the background color and text color. html <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title> Attribute selector in CSS </title> <style> a[target=_top] { background-color: green; color: white; } a { font-size: 20px; } </style> </head> <body style = "text-align:center;"> <h1 style = "color:green;" > GeeksForGeeks </h1> <a href="https://www.geeksforgeeks.org//" target="_top" > geeksforgeeks.org </a> <br><br> <a href="https://www.google.com//" > google.com </a> </body> </html> Output:Example 3: Selecting Elements with Attribute Values Starting with a Specified ValueIn this example, we use the [class^="top"] selector to target all <p> elements whose class attribute starts with the string "top". html <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title> Attribute selector in CSS </title> <style> [class^="top"] { background-color: green; color: white; } p { font-size: 20px; } </style> </head> <body style = "text-align:center;"> <h1 style = "color:green;" > GeeksForGeeks </h1> <p class="top-p">A computer science portal</p> <p class="topPara">Attribute Selector Example</p> <p class="Para">CSS does not applies here</p> </body> </html> Output: Comment More infoAdvertise with us P PranchalKatiyar Follow Improve Article Tags : Web Technologies CSS CSS-Selectors Similar Reads CSS Tutorial CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. 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