Flexbox is a display property in CSS which lets us do some interesting things very easily like positioning single or multiple elements, creating column layouts, automatically managing spacing between items inside a div. The size of items can be fixed or dynamic, flex layout is flexible enough to work with either hence the term “flex”.

Every thing in flex box starts with a container. The container is just a div element which we make into a flexbox element so that we can start using all the wonderful features of flexbox.

We’ll take the following basic example to see how flexbox works and what we can do with it.

<div class="container">
  <div class="item">Item #1</div>
  <div class="item">Item #2</div>
  <div class="item">Item #3</div>
</div>

.container {
	display: flex;
}
.item {}

Although the above code technically makes your elements flex boxy, I added some styles to make it look a little nicer and to be able to see more clearly how flexbox works.

Properties at a glance

On flex container

• flex-direction
• flex-wrap
• justify-content
• align-items
• align-content

On flex items

• align-self
• order
• flex-grow
• flex-shrink
• flex-basis

Properties in detail

flex-direction

Applied to the container div, it defines the primary direction in which the items in the container will be layed out. Either vertically or horizontally and their reverse directions.

You can think of a flex container as having two axis like x-axis and y-axis. The flex-direction property defines which of these axis will act as the primary axis for its items.

For example if we give flex-direction: row, this makes the x-axis of the flex container its primary axis and all its items will be laid out horizontally from left to right.

If we do flex-direction: column-reverse lets, this makes the y-axis its primary axis but in reverse order and the items will be laid out vertically from bottom to top.

default: row

.container{
  ...
  flex-direction: row | row-reverse | column | column-reverse;
}

justify-content

This property manages how the items are placed horizontally inside the container if the container has flex-direction as row or row-reverse and how the items are placed vertically if the container’s flex-direction property is column or column-reverse.

default: flex-start

.container{
  ...
  justify-content: flex-start | flex-end | center | space-between | space-around | space-evenly;
}

align-items

Similar to justify-content, this property manages the vertical spacing/position of the items inside the container if the container’s flex-direction property is row or row-reverse and the horizontal spacing/position of the items if the container’s flex-direction is column or column-reverse.

You can think of justify-content and align-items as the properties that manages the spacing/position of items along the x-axis and y-axis based on what the flex-direction property of the container is.

default: stretch

.container{
  ...
  align-items: flex-start | flex-end | center | stretch | baseline;
}

flex-wrap

What happens when there are more child elements or items than there is width of the container?

By default, all the items will try to be in one line, we can make them “wrap” according to the container width and the number of items.

default: nowrap

.container{
  ...
  flex-wrap: nowrap | wrap | wrap-reverse;
}

align-content

Consider a case where there are enough items in a container that they don’t fit into a single line and you’re wrapping the items using the flex-wrap property explained above into multiple rows.

The align-content property then helps manage the vertical spacing/position between those ‘wrapped’ rows.

Think of align-content as a justify-content or align-items but for rows of flex-items instead of just individual items.

And similar to justify-content, behaviour of align-content changes according to flex-direction that is it’ll manage horizontal spacing/position if flex-direction of the container is set to column or column-reverse. Try out the various combinations in the playground in the last section.

default: normal

.container{
  ...
  align-content: flex-start | flex-end | center | stretch | space-between | space-around;
}

align-self

This is used to override the align-items property for a particular item otherwise dictated by the container.

.item{
  ...
  align-self: auto | flex-start | flex-end | center | stretch | baseline;
}

flex-grow

You can make the items in your flex container expand and occupy the available space inside a container. Values are unitless and act as a ratio in respect to flex-grow values of other items.

If all items have flex-grow:0, then each item will have it’s default or set width.

If all items have flex-grow:1, then each of the item will expand to fill the available space and have the same width.

If two items have flex-grow:1 and one item has flex-grow:2 lets say, then the item with flex-grow value 2 will take up twice the amount of space (if available) as that of items with flex-grow value 1.

default: 0

.item{
  ...
  flex-grow: 3;
}

flex-shrink

Same as flex-grow but to shrink the space occupied by items insted of expanding to occupy the available space.

default: 1

.item{
  ...
  flex-shrink: 3;
}

order

By default, all items inside a container that have order value 0 will appear in the container in the order they’re laid out in the code. But we can dynamically change the position of items inside a container by changing this property.

default: 0

.item{
  ...
  order: 3;
}

The items that don’t have the order field appear as they would have normally appeared in the DOM. But if you give order: -1 to item #3 it’ll come before item #2.

flex-basis

This property defines the default size of an item before the rest of the available space is distributed to the items.

default: auto

.item{
  ...
  flex-basis: 50px; /* or 50rem or 50% */
}

Shorthands

flex

Shorthand for:

• flex-grow
• flex-shrink
• flex-basis

default: 0 1 auto

.item{
  ...
  flex: 2 1 30%;
}

flex-flow

Shorthand for:

• flex-direction
• flex-wrap

default: row nowrap

.container{
  ...
  flex-flow: row-reverse wrap;;
}

Flexbox Playground