Combining width and flex attributes to create versatile utility classes

Question

Combining width and flex attributes to create versatile utility classes

Within my website, there are numerous utility classes designed to set the width of various elements. In most cases, utilizing the width property works perfectly fine. However, I have encountered an issue when dealing with flexbox elements. Instead of using the width property for flex items, the flex property must be employed. To address this discrepancy, I attempted to create a single class that combines both properties:

.width-100 {
    width: 100px !important;
    flex: 0 0 100px !important;
}

To my surprise, this combined approach did work in the limited instances where I tested it. Elements not leveraging flexbox had their width correctly defined by the width property, while those using flexbox functioned as expected thanks to the flex property. Despite this success, I am left pondering whether this solution introduces potential bugs that may currently elude me.

html css flexbox

Answer 1

Answer №1

There may be a situation where the use of a min-width constraint causes the flex item to behave differently when setting its width:

Here is an example to illustrate this:

.box {
  display:flex;
  margin:10px;
}
.box > img {
  flex: 0 0 120px;
}

.box > span {
  flex-grow:1;
  background-color:blue;
}

<div class="box">
  <img src="https://example.com/image.jpg">
  <span></span>
</div>

In the example above, the image will have a width of 120px due to the min-width constraint applied. However, if you were to set the width to 100px, the result would change accordingly. It is important to note that assuming the width property does not work in flexbox and resorting to using flex-basis instead may lead to incorrect results. While explicitly specifying the width as 100px will ensure a consistent width, it is not the same as employing flex: 0 0 100px for flex items:

A more concise version of your code could simply be

.fixed-width {
    width: 100px !important;
    flex-shrink: 0 !important;
}

This revised approach should yield the same outcome as the initial implementation since flex-grow defaults to 0 and the specified width is taken into account by flex-basis.

Answer 2

There may be a situation where the use of a min-width constraint causes the flex item to behave differently when setting its width:

Here is an example to illustrate this:

.box {
  display:flex;
  margin:10px;
}
.box > img {
  flex: 0 0 120px;
}

.box > span {
  flex-grow:1;
  background-color:blue;
}

<div class="box">
  <img src="https://example.com/image.jpg">
  <span></span>
</div>

In the example above, the image will have a width of 120px due to the min-width constraint applied. However, if you were to set the width to 100px, the result would change accordingly. It is important to note that assuming the width property does not work in flexbox and resorting to using flex-basis instead may lead to incorrect results. While explicitly specifying the width as 100px will ensure a consistent width, it is not the same as employing flex: 0 0 100px for flex items:

A more concise version of your code could simply be

.fixed-width {
    width: 100px !important;
    flex-shrink: 0 !important;
}

This revised approach should yield the same outcome as the initial implementation since flex-grow defaults to 0 and the specified width is taken into account by flex-basis.

Combining width and flex attributes to create versatile utility classes

Answer №1

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