puppeteer/website/versioned_docs/version-21.5.1/guides/query-selectors-legacy.md
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# Query Selectors (legacy)
Queries are the primary mechanism for interacting with the DOM on your site. For example, a typical workflow goes like:
```ts
// Import puppeteer
import puppeteer from 'puppeteer';
(async () => {
// Launch the browser
const browser = await puppeteer.launch();
// Create a page
const page = await browser.newPage();
// Go to your site
await page.goto('YOUR_SITE');
// Query for an element handle.
const element = await page.waitForSelector('div > .class-name');
// Do something with element...
await element.click(); // Just an example.
// Dispose of handle
await element.dispose();
// Close browser.
await browser.close();
})();
```
## CSS
CSS selectors follow the CSS spec of the browser being automated. We provide some basic type deduction for CSS selectors (such as `HTMLInputElement` for `input`), but any selector that contains no type information (such as `.class-name`) will need to be coerced manually using TypeScript's `as` coercion mechanism.
### Example
```ts
// Automatic
const element = await page.waitForSelector('div > input');
// Manual
const element = (await page.waitForSelector(
'div > .class-name-for-input'
)) as HTMLInputElement;
```
## Built-in selectors
Built-in selectors are Puppeteer's own class of selectors for doing things CSS cannot. Every built-in selector starts with a prefix `.../` to assist Puppeteer in distinguishing between CSS selectors and a built-in.
### Text selectors (`text/`)
Text selectors will select "minimal" elements containing the given text, even within (open) shadow roots. Here, "minimum" means the deepest elements that contain a given text, but not their parents (which technically will also contain the given text).
#### Example
```ts
// Note we usually need type coercion since the type cannot be deduced, but for text selectors, `instanceof` checks may be better for runtime validation.
const element = await page.waitForSelector('text/My name is Jun');
```
### XPath selectors (`xpath/`)
XPath selectors will use the browser's native [`Document.evaluate`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Document/evaluate) to query for elements.
#### Example
```ts
// There is not type deduction for XPaths.
const node = await page.waitForSelector('xpath/h2');
```
### ARIA selectors (`aria/`)
ARIA selectors can be used to find elements with a given ARIA label. These labels are computed using Chrome's internal representation.
#### Example
```ts
const node = await page.waitForSelector('aria/Button name');
```
### Pierce selectors (`pierce/`)
Pierce selectors will run the `querySelector*` API on the document and all shadow roots to find an element.
:::danger
Selectors will **not** _partially_ pierce through shadow roots. See the examples below.
:::
#### Example
Suppose the HTML is
```html
<div>
<custom-element>
<div></div>
</custom-element>
</div>
```
Then
```ts
// This will be two elements because of the outer and inner div.
expect((await page.$$('pierce/div')).length).toBe(2);
// Partial piercing doesn't work.
expect((await page.$$('pierce/div div')).length).toBe(0);
```
## Custom selectors
Puppeteer provides users the ability to add their own query selectors to Puppeteer using [Puppeteer.registerCustomQueryHandler](../api/puppeteer.registercustomqueryhandler.md). This is useful for creating custom selectors based on framework objects or other vendor-specific objects.