Back in December when the Sizzle selector engine was announced, John Resig’s creation was thought to be the end game. Four months later it seems as though it was just the beginning.

Harald Kirschner has released Sly, a standalone javascript selector engine that absolutely tears through the DOM. Sly is a tiny 3KB minified and gzipped, supports all CSS3 selectors, and provides functionality to create your own custom combinators. Don’t believe me? Read Harald’s documentation.

Support

• Sly’s Slickspeed (note that Sizzle is represented as jQuery 1.3.2)
• Sly Download Page
• Clientcide Review

Usage Examples

// Finds all div blocks
blocks = Sly.search('div');

// Finds all anchors with `href` attribute that starts with `"http://"`
anchors = Sly.search('a[href^="http://"]');

// Finds all list item that are direct descendants of the list item with id `"navigation"`
items = Sly.search('ul#navigation > li');

// Finds all heading elements
heads = Sly.search('h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6');

// Finds all odd rows in all tables with the class `"zebra"`
rows = Sly.search('table.zebra tr:odd');

// Finds something and looks really complex
inputs = Sly.search('form[action$=/send/] label~span+input[type=text]:first-child');

That last one was something special, eh?

Congratulations!

Join me in extending a huge congratulations and thank you to Harald! While Sizzle got the ball rolling, the selector engine game isn’t over by any means!

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