CSS3 selector to find the 2nd div of the same class

I need a CSS selector that can find the 2nd div of 2 that has the same class. I've looked at nth-child() but it's not what I want since I can't see a way to further clarify what class I want. These 2 divs will be siblings in the document if that helps.

My HTML looks something like this:

<div class="foo">...</div>
<div class="bar">...</div>
<div class="baz">...</div>
<div class="bar">...</div>

And I want the 2nd div.bar (or the last div.bar would work too).


Selectors can be combined:

.bar:nth-child(2)

means "thing that has class bar" that is also the 2nd child.


My original answer regarding :nth-of-type is simply wrong. Thanks to Paul for pointing this out.

The word "type" there refers only to the "element type" (like div). It turns out that the selectors div.bar:nth-of-type(2) and div:nth-of-type(2).bar mean the same thing. Both select elements that [a] are the second div of their parent, and [b] have class bar.

So the only pure CSS solution left that I'm aware of, if you want to select all elements of a certain selector except the first, is the general sibling selector:

.bar ~ .bar

http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/sel_gen_sibling.asp


My original (wrong) answer follows:

With the arrival of CSS3, there is another option. It may not have been available when the question was first asked:

.bar:nth-of-type(2)

http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/sel_nth-of-type.asp

This selects the second element that satisfies the .bar selector.

If you want the second and last of a specific kind of element (or all of them except the first), the general sibling selector would also work fine:

.bar ~ .bar

http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/sel_gen_sibling.asp

It's shorter. But of course, we don't like to duplicate code, right? :-)


UPDATE: This answer was originally written in 2008 when nth-of-type support was unreliable at best. Today I'd say you could safely use something like .bar:nth-of-type(2), unless you have to support IE8 and older.


Original answer from 2008 follows (Note that I would not recommend this anymore!):

If you can use Prototype JS you can use this code to set some style values, or add another classname:

// set style:
$$('div.theclassname')[1].setStyle({ backgroundColor: '#900', fontSize: '1.2em' });
// OR add class name:
$$('div.theclassname')[1].addClassName('secondclass'); // pun intentded...

(I didn't test this code, and it doesn't check if there actually is a second div present, but something like this should work.)

But if you're generating the html serverside you might just as well add an extra class on the second item...