The :only-child Selector is used to select the elements, who are the only child of their parent.
Let us simplify with the below example.
<html> <head> <title> My First Programme </title> </head> <body> <h1> JQuery </h1> <div class = "newClass1"> <p class = "para1"> First Paragraph </p> <p class = "para2"> Second Paragraph </p> <p class = "para3"> Third Paragraph </p> </div> <div class = "newClass2"> <p class = "newPara"> Next Paragraph </p> </div> <button> Click me </button> <script src = "https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/JQUERY/3.3.1/jquery.min.js"> </script> <script> $('button').click( function() { $('p:only-child').text("The content of the only child got changed") }); </script> </body> </html>
So, if you see the above code. We can see that there are three <p> elements, those are inside a <div> element.
<div class = "newClass1"> <p class = "para1"> First Paragraph </p> <p class = "para2"> Second Paragraph </p> <p class = "para3"> Third Paragraph </p> </div>
The corresponding DOM for it is,
Also there is another <div> element that has one child,
<div class = "newClass2"> <p class = "newPara"> Next Paragraph </p> </div>
The DOM for it is,
The <div> element has three children of type <p>.
<p class = "para1"> First Paragraph </p> <p class = "para2"> Second Paragraph </p> <p class = "para3"> Third Paragraph </p>
And the third child of <div> element is,
<p class = "newPara"> Next Paragraph </p>
And on button click, the contents of the <div> element with only child,
<div class = "newClass2"> <p class = "newPara"> Next Paragraph </p> </div>
Gets changed to The content of the only child got changed.
And this happened with the :only-child element selector.
$('button').click( function() { $('p:only-child').text("The content of the only child got changed") });
The moment the button is clicked, JQuery statement gets triggered.
$('p:only-child').text("The content of the only child got changed")
And the JQuery code locates the <p> element that is the only and changes its contents.