Implicit Conversion

Delven does implicit conversions for complex types.

What this means is that when we use a selector such as css('a') we are actually selecting a HTMLElement not the value associated with the elements, so in order to get the value we follow some rules to do that.

Implicit conversion is ENABLED by default, to disable it we can use the OPTIONS clause.

  SELECT  css("#id1")  FROM  http://www.delven.io/test/index-01.html 
  OPTIONS
  {
      "implicit-conversion" : false
  }

When conversion is ENABLED following two selectors are equivalent.

   css('a') ->  css('a:value')

They both will return text value of the link. Note the use of Selector Extension :value which can be always used to select actual value of an element regardles of conversion being ENABLED or DISABLED

HTML <a> Tag

<a href="https://www.delven.io" data-content="Some Content">PhantomSQL</a>

Selector

   css('a') ->  css('a:value')

Result

    CONVERSION ENABLED 
    {
        "value": "Delven"        
    }

    CONVERSION DISABLED
    {
        "value": "Delven",
        "href": "https://www.delven.io",
        "data-content": "Some Content"
    }

HTML <input> Tag

  <input type="text" id="firstname" value="Greg">

   css('#firstname')

Result

    CONVERSION ENABLED 
    {
        "value" : "Greg"
    }

    CONVERSION DISABLED
    {
        "value" : "Greg",
        "type"  : "text",
        "id"    : "firstname"
    }