[html] Apply CSS styles to an element depending on its child elements

Is it possible to define a CSS style for an element, that is only applied if the matching element contains a specific element (as the direct child item)?

I think this is best explained using an example.

Note: I'm trying to style the parent element, depending on what child elements it contains.

<style>
  /* note this is invalid syntax. I'm using the non-existing
   ":containing" pseudo-class to show what I want to achieve. */
  div:containing div.a { border: solid 3px red; }
  div:containing div.b { border: solid 3px blue; }
</style>

<!-- the following div should have a red border because
     if contains a div with class="a" -->
<div>
  <div class="a"></div>
</div>

<!-- the following div should have a blue border -->
<div>
  <div class="b"></div>
</div>

Note 2: I know I can achieve this using javascript, but I just wondered whether this is possible using some unknown (to me) CSS features.

Basically, no. The following would be what you were after in theory:

div.a < div { border: solid 3px red; }

Unfortunately it doesn't exist.

There are a few write-ups along the lines of "why the hell not". A well fleshed out one by Shaun Inman is pretty good:

http://www.shauninman.com/archive/2008/05/05/css_qualified_selectors

In my case, I had to change the cell padding of an element that contained an input checkbox for a table that's being dynamically rendered with DataTables:

<td class="dt-center">
    <input class="a" name="constCheck" type="checkbox" checked="">
</td>

After implementing the following line code within the initComplete function I was able to produce the correct padding, which fixed the rows from being displayed with an abnormally large height

 $('tbody td:has(input.a)').css('padding', '0px');

Now, you can see that the correct styles are being applied to the parent element:

<td class=" dt-center" style="padding: 0px;">
    <input class="a" name="constCheck" type="checkbox" checked="">
</td>

Essentially, this answer is an extension of @KP's answer, but the more collaboration of implementing this the better. In summation, I hope this helps someone else because it works! Lastly, thank you so much @KP for leading me in the right direction!

On top of @kp's answer:

I'm dealing with this and in my case, I have to show a child element and correct the height of the parent object accordingly (auto-sizing is not working in a bootstrap header for some reason I don't have time to debug).

But instead of using javascript to modify the parent, I think I'll dynamically add a CSS class to the parent and CSS-selectively show the children accordingly. This will maintain the decisions in the logic and not based on a CSS state.

tl;dr; apply the a and b styles to the parent <div>, not the child (of course, not everyone will be able to do this. i.e. Angular components making decisions of their own).

<style>
  .parent            { height: 50px; }
  .parent div        { display: none; }
  .with-children     { height: 100px; }
  .with-children div { display: block; }
</style>

<div class="parent">
  <div>child</div>
</div>

<script>
  // to show the children
  $('.parent').addClass('with-children');
</script>