/ExCSS

A CSS Parser for .NET. It's BADA55!

Primary LanguageC#MIT LicenseMIT

ExCSS StyleSheet Parser for .NET - It's BADA55!

ExCSS (Pronounced Excess) is a CSS 2.1 and CSS 3 parser for .NET.

The goal of ExCSS is to make it easy to read and parse stylesheets into a friendly object model with full LINQ support.

Version 3.0

Version 3 has been rewritten from the ground up! This is the most advanced ExCSS parser to date. The parser has been rebuild to have far better white spaces support as well as the ability to handle unknown rule sets in the ever-changing web and CSS landscape.

NuGet

Version 2 is still available via NuGet. Version 3 is making the transition to .NET Core and a new NuGet build strategy is in the works.

Lexing and Parsing - How it all Works

ExCSS uses a Lexer and a Parser based on a CSS3-specific grammar. The Lexer and Parser read CSS text and parse each character as individual tokens run against a complex set of rules that define what CSS segment each token represents.
Once parsed, the input styles sheet is turned into a standard .NET object model. That means it's fully queryable using Linq to objects.

A basic example:

var parser = new StylesheetParser();
var stylesheet = parser.Parse(".someClass{color: red; background-image: url('/images/logo.png')");

var rule = stylesheet.Rules.First()
var selector = rule.SelectorText; // Yields .someClass
    var color = rule.Style.Color;
var image = rule.Style.BackgroundImage; // url('/images/logo.png')

CSS 3 Compatible

The project has a growing suite of tests. Currently the tests account for and pass all CSS Level 3 selector definitions found in the W3 CSS 3 Release Candidate documentation