Detecting the type of CSS selector from a string

Question

I have some JSON that contains thousands of different CSS selectors, here's a sample of the variety...

"#mid_ad_title",
"#mid_mpu",
"#mid_roll_ad_holder",
".SidebarAdvert",
".SitesGoogleAdsModule",
".SkyAdContainer",
"a[href$=\"/vghd.shtml\"]",
"a[href*=\"/adrotate/adrotate-out.php?\"]",
"a[href^=\"http://ad-apac.doubleclick.net/\"]",
"#mn #center_col > div > h2.spon:first-child + ol:last-child",
"#resultspanel > #topads",
"#rhs_block > #mbEnd"

So as you can see, the JSON is made up of a variety of selectors - some are just a class, some are just an ID and some are a mixture.

I'd like to use the relevant JavaScript "get" method depending on the type of selector, so for selectors that are just IDs I'd use document.getElementById() , etc.

Does anyone know of any regular expressions or something that will tell me the type of selector when I loop through the JSON? Ie "class", "id", "other" .

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I think you'll find more use in a switch :

var results = [];
for(var i = 0; i < selectors.length; i++){
    var s = selectors[i];
    if( s.indexOf(' ') !== -1){
        s = s.substring(0, s.indexOf(' '));
    }
    switch(selectors[i][0]){
        case '#': // ID
        results.push(document.getElementById(s.substr(1)));
        break;
    case '.': // Class
        results.push(document.getElementsByClassName(s.substr(1)));
        break;
    default: // Tag
        results.push(document.getElementsByTagName(s));
        break;
    }
}

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However , the only reliable solution would be to use:

document.querySelectorAll(selector);