Lightweight data structure representing a span of bytes in an HTML document.

Source: wp-includes/html-api/class-wp-html-span.php
Since: 6.2.0
Access: private

Overview

This is a two-tuple in disguise, used to avoid the memory overhead of using an array for the same purpose. It represents a contiguous range of bytes in the input HTML.

Properties

start

public $start;

Type: int

Byte offset where the span begins in the document.

length

public $length;

Type: int

Byte length of the span.

Since: 6.5.0 (replaced end with length to align with substr())

Methods

__construct()

Creates a span.

public function __construct( int $start, int $length )

Usage Example

$html = '<div class="example">content</div>';
//       0         1         2         3
//       0123456789012345678901234567890123

// Span representing the class attribute value "example"
$span = new WP_HTML_Span( 12, 7 );
$value = substr( $html, $span->start, $span->length );
// Returns: "example"

Internal Usage

The span is used internally by the tag processor for:

• Tracking duplicate attribute positions
• Marking bookmark locations
• Defining ranges for text replacements

// Example: bookmarks are stored as spans
$this->bookmarks[ $name ] = new WP_HTML_Span(
    $this->token_starts_at,
    $this->token_length
);