Keep flex items in place after deleting one item - html

Question

I have the following html:
<div class="grommetux-box grommetux-box--direction-row grommetux-box--align-center grommetux-box--responsive grommetux-box--pad-none grommetux-box--wrap second-header">
<div class="grommetux-box grommetux-box--direction-row grommetux-box--responsive grommetux-box--pad-none school-info">
<header class="grommetux-box grommetux-box--direction-row grommetux-box--align-center grommetux-box--pad-horizontal-none grommetux-box--pad-vertical-none grommetux-box--pad-between-small grommetux-header school-name">
<!-- react-text: 74 --><!-- /react-text -->
</header>
<header class="grommetux-box grommetux-box--direction-row grommetux-box--align-center grommetux-box--pad-horizontal-none grommetux-box--pad-vertical-none grommetux-box--pad-between-small grommetux-header grommetux-header--small school-code">
<!-- react-text: 76 -->School Code: <!-- /react-text -->
</header>
</div>
<div class="grommetux-box grommetux-box--direction-row grommetux-box--responsive grommetux-box--pad-none search-box">
</div>
</div>
My CSS
.grommetux-box {
display: -ms-flexbox;
display: flex;
background-position: 50%;
background-size: cover;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
}
.grommetux-box--direction-row {
-ms-flex-direction: row;
flex-direction: row;
}
.search-box {
text-decoration: none;
justify-content: flex-end;
}
.school-info {
text-indent: inherit;
flex-direction: inherit;
justify-content: flex-start;
display: flex;
}
Sorry this code doesn't show the whole picture but basically my issue is when I delete the first inner div, the second inner div replaces it by taking its place (moving left). How can I design my flex so that if I delete one, it doesn't effect the position of the other?

Answer 1

In case, there are multiple items inside a flex-container and we remove one or more items, browser will recalculate and update the position of rest of the items automatically.
There is one possibility though i.e instead of removing items from the DOM we just hide them from the view with visibility: hidden. This css property hides the elements from view but keep them in DOM. As a result elements with such style will be hidden but keep the space in view.
A quick demo is in below snippet:
.container {
min-height: 200px;
display: flex;
}
.item {
background: blue;
margin: 10px;
width: 15%;
}
.item.hidden {
visibility: hidden;
}
<div class="container">
<div class="item"></div>
<div class="item"></div>
<div class="item"></div>
<div class="item hidden"></div>
<div class="item"></div>
</div>

Answer 2

Here's another trick that might be helpful in some cases. In case you want to keep certain flexbox items in their place while you add/remove others, you can use the visibility and height properties, such that you set the height of the 'hidden' item to 0 and only adjust it's visibility property to show/hide.
I do not know why this works exactly, but it does. Maybe someone more knowledgeable can shed light on this as well as its limitations. Upside is it does not use absolute positioning; it displays immediately after other flexbox items.
A useful use case would be to show an error message text without disrupting the flow of existing flexbox items.
document.querySelector('#btn').addEventListener('click', function() {
let additional_item = document.querySelector('.additional-item')
if (additional_item.style['visibility'] == 'visible') {
document.querySelector('.additional-item').style['visibility'] = 'hidden'
} else {
document.querySelector('.additional-item').style['visibility'] = 'visible'
}
})
.container {
height: 150px;
width: 250px;
background-color: lightgreen;
margin-bottom: 15px;
gap: 15px;
display: flex;
justify-content: center;
flex-direction: column;
}
.flex-item {
border: 1px solid black;
text-align: center;
}
.additional-item {
visibility: hidden;
height: 0px;
text-align: center;
}
#btn {
width: 250px;
}
<div class="container">
<div class="flex-item">Two flexbox items</div>
<div class="flex-item">perfectly positioned in the center</div>
<div class="additional-item">Item that does not move other items</div>
</div>
<button id="btn">Click to show/hide additional item</button>