How to implement Tailwind grids with horizontal spacing without wrapping to the next line? - html

Question

I have a section with the following contents:
<section class="flex flex-wrap -mx-2">
<Card
v-for="(course, index) in courses"
:key="index"
:title="course.title"
:professor="course.professor"
:price="course.price"
:excerpt="course.excerpt"
:image="course.image"
:category="course.category"
/>
</section>
A Card looks like this:
<article class="bg-red mt-5 px-2 w-full md:w-1/2 lg:w-1/3 xl:w-1/3 shadow-md rounded bg-white">
<nuxt-link to="/courses/example-course">
<img :src="`/images/${image}`" :alt="title" class="rounded-t w-full">
</nuxt-link>
<div class="p-4">
<header class="flex justify-between">
<section>
<h3 class="text-gray-700">
<nuxt-link to="/courses/example-course" class="hover:text-gray-600" v-text="title"></nuxt-link>
</h3>
<p class="text-gray-600 mt-1" v-text="professor"></p>
</section>
<div v-if="price">
<span class="px-2 py-1 bg-green-200 text-green-500 font-bold rounded">${{ price }}</span>
</div>
</header>
<article class="text-gray-700 mt-2" v-text="excerpt"></article>
</div>
<footer class="border-t border-gray-300 uppercase p-5 flex justify-between">
<span class="text-gray-600 text-xs font-bold self-center" v-text="category"></span>
<a href="#" class="text-gray-600 hover:text-blue-600">
<i v-if="price" class="fa fa-user"></i>
</a>
</footer>
</article>
And the outcome of all this looks like this:
As you can see, the cards are touching each other, despite me following what the Tailwind's docs say on grid spacing. I have tried adding ml-2 on the <article> tags, but that just results in wrapping the element prematurely and leaving out too much space.
What am I doing wrong here and how to add a gap between the cards? Thanks!

Answer 1

The "problem" with margin is that it lives on the outside of the box(model) of your element, e.g. it affects the total width of your card. For example on large screens you want them to be 33.33% wide, but if you add margin on the left/right, the card will have a width of 33.33% + margin which makes the flexbox container wrap after two items because otherwise the total width would be more than 100%. You can solve this by a) setting things to box-sizing: border-box (doesn't help with margin tough!) and b) use padding instead of margin to create the gaps, this usually requires some kind of wrapper around your content that does nothing else than dealing with spacing and sizing, something like this:
<article class="mt-5 px-2 w-full md:w-1/2 lg:w-1/3 xl:w-1/3">
<div class="card bg-red shadow-md rounded bg-white">
<nuxt-link to="/courses/example-course">
<img :src="`/images/${image}`" :alt="title" class="rounded-t w-full">
</nuxt-link>
<div class="p-4">
<header class="flex justify-between">
<section>
<h3 class="text-gray-700">
<nuxt-link to="/courses/example-course" class="hover:text-gray-600" v-text="title"></nuxt-link>
</h3>
<p class="text-gray-600 mt-1" v-text="professor"></p>
</section>
<div v-if="price">
<span class="px-2 py-1 bg-green-200 text-green-500 font-bold rounded">${{ price }}</span>
</div>
</header>
<article class="text-gray-700 mt-2" v-text="excerpt"></article>
</div>
<footer class="border-t border-gray-300 uppercase p-5 flex justify-between">
<span class="text-gray-600 text-xs font-bold self-center" v-text="category"></span>
<a href="#" class="text-gray-600 hover:text-blue-600">
<i v-if="price" class="fa fa-user"></i>
</a>
</footer>
</div>
</article>
I know it is kind of annoying to clutter up the markup like that, but its usually worth it =).
EDIT: It is actually as the docs say
Add a negative horizontal margin like -mx-2 to your column container and an equal horizontal padding like px-2 to each column to add gutters.
your issue is with the box-shadow that then doesn't let you create a visual gap, so technically you need the wrapper because of your box-shadow!