CSS selectors are not attributes. They serve as patterns that determine which elements should have styles applied to them within the document.
For more information, you can visit the w3c website: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/selector.html
"In CSS, pattern matching rules decide which style rules should be applied to elements in the document tree. These patterns, known as selectors, can vary from simple element names to complex contextual patterns. If all conditions in the pattern are true for a certain element, then the selector matches the element."
If needed, you can use the attribute name "my-data-node-type" as part of a CSS selector to refer to your link. However, it's important to note that a CSS selector is distinct from an attribute. Attributes are the name/value pairs of data contained within element tags in HTML and other related markup languages.
<element my-attribute-name="my-attribute-value" />
Although not a standard reference, the Wikipedia page on HTML provides a user-friendly explanation of attributes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Html
For instance, consider the following HTML:
<div id="foo">
<a data-node-type="foo" href="bar">Click me!</a>
</div>
In this case, "data-node-type" and "href" are the attributes of the <a> tag,
# while:
div#foo a[data-node-type=foo]
# or:
div a[href]
# alternatively:
a
... represent CSS selectors targeting the specified <a> with the first two making use of its attributes.