LESS - Parent Selectors

Quiz

Description

The Parent selectors operator has many uses like, when you need to combine the nested rule's selectors in other way than the default. Another typical use of & is to generate class names repeatedly.

Example

The following example demonstrates to generate class names repeatedly in the LESS file −

<html>
   <head>
      <link rel = "stylesheet" href = "style.css" type = "text/css" />
      <title>Parent Selector</title>
   </head>

   <body>
      <h2>Welcome to TutorialsPoint</h2>
      <p class = "select-first">It is possible to reference the parent 
      selector by using &(ampersand) operator.</p>
      <p class = "select-second">It is possible to reference the 
      parent selector by using &(ampersand) operator</p>
      <p class = "select-third">It is possible to reference the 
      parent selector by using &(ampersand) operator.</p>
   </body>
</html>

Now create the style.less file.

style.less

.select {
   &-first {
      background-color: #58D3F7;
   }
   &-second {
      background-color: #F5F6CE;
   }

   &-third {
      background-color: #F5A9E1;
   }
}

You can compile the style.less file to style.css by using the following command −

lessc style.less style.css

Execute the above command; it will create the style.css file automatically with the following code −

style.css

.select-first {
   background-color: #58D3F7;
}

.select-second {
   background-color: #F5F6CE;
}

.select-third {
   background-color: #F5A9E1;
}

Output

Follow these steps to see how the above code works −

Save the above html code in the parent_selector22.htm file.
Open this HTML file in a browser, the following output will get displayed.

less_parent_selectors.htm

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