select an element "inside" the :first-child pseudo selector using CSS

Question

Good day all.

I have a problem, a structure like this:

<ul>
    <li>
        <span><span>
    </li>
    <li class="selected">
        <span><span>
    </li>
    <li class="selected">
        <span><span>
    </li>
    <li class="selected">
        <span><span>
    </li>
    <li>
        <span><span>
    </li>
</ul>

I would like to select the first and last that have selected on the parent... the pseudo code should be like this:

li.selected span { background: #FF4D6E; color: white; }
li.selected:first-child span{border-radius:30px;}
li.selected:last-child span{border-radius:30px;}

the problem is that the span is inside the collection of .selected so I would like to have the first .selected, and its span

This is not possible. There is the proposed `~` parent selector, but it is not implemented. — somethinghere, Oct 22 '14 at 14:07
I do use jquery, but at this stage I must achieve this via solely CSS :/ too bad, but as always, very thanks for the help :D — Matteo Bononi 'peorthyr', Oct 22 '14 at 14:11
some links: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2717480/css-selector-for-first-element-with-class and this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5287272/css-select-first-element-with-a-certain-class/5293095#5293095 — George G, Oct 22 '14 at 14:47

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 22 '14 at 14:08

3

That is not possible because .selected class element is not the first of its parent. But you can do a workaround here by using sibling selectors as shown below:

/* first child */
li.selected span{
    border-radius: 30px;
}

/* middle children */
li.selected + li.selected span{
     border-radius: 0px;
}

/* last child */
li.selected ~ li.selected ~ li.selected span {
     border-radius: 30px;
}

Above code is assuming you have only three .selected elements. If you have more and you know the count then change the last child code in the above with respect to the count. For example, if you have four .selected elements.

li.selected ~ li.selected ~ li.selected ~ li.selected span {     
     border-radius: 30px;
}

Example Fiddle

answered Oct 22 '14 at 14:08

Mr_Green

40,727
45
159
271

unluckily... this will be dynamic, so no way to know how many they will be :( – Matteo Bononi 'peorthyr' Oct 22 '14 at 14:11
i'll accept your answer bcouse at least it shows a workaround :D – Matteo Bononi 'peorthyr' Oct 22 '14 at 14:13
1

@MatteoBononi'peorthyr' hey thank you man... you make me 10k :D – Mr_Green Oct 22 '14 at 14:18

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 22 '14 at 14:19

0

If you are using jQuery then do this:

$("li.selected span").css("background" : "#FF4D6E", "color" : "#fff");

$("li.selected:first-child span").css("border-radius" : "30px");

$("li.selected:last-child span").css("border-radius" : "30px");

answered Oct 22 '14 at 14:19

Edward Manda

559
3
7

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 22 '14 at 14:19

To do this, I recommend taking a few hours to learn jquery. Here is a link to a good jquery tutorial. You can finish this tutorial in about three hours.

Jquery allows you to dynamically select any element that you want and modify it in pretty much any way you can imagine.

This is the code I would use to modify the CSS of the first and last span elements with .selected parents:

var $childOfSelected = $('.selected').children('span')

$childOfSelected.last().css({'border-radius':'30px'});
$childOfSelected.first().css({'border-radius':'30px'});

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 22 '14 at 14:36

For the first child you can use this

li.selected span {
  background: #FF4D6E;
  color: white;
}
.selected:first-child,
:not(.selected) + .selected span {
  border-radius: 30px;
}

<ul>
    <li>
        <span>not</span>
    </li>
    <li class="selected">
        <span>selected</span>
    </li>
    <li class="selected">
        <span>selected</span>
    </li>
    <li class="selected">
        <span>selected</span>
    </li>
    <li>
        <span>not</span>
    </li>
</ul>

select an element "inside" the :first-child pseudo selector using CSS

4 Answers4