Ellipsis not working in flex container

Question

I'm trying to create a layout (which will be a music player) with flex.

I have 3 buttons (previous, play, and next, represented by the red squares) which I always want to be on the same line.

I then have some song info (current time, song title, and total time) that I want to display to the right of the buttons.

I pretty much always want the total time to be on the far right and for the song title to fill up the remaining width (with flex-grow), but to truncate with ellipsis as the window gets smaller.

Does anyone have any idea how to tweak this to get it to work properly?

.wrapper {
  display: flex;
  align-items: center;
}
ul {
  display: inline-block;
  list-style: none;
  flex-shrink: 0;
}
li {
  display: inline-block;
  width: 30px;
  height: 30px;
  background: red;
  margin-right: 3px;
}
.song-wrapper {
  background: beige;
  display: flex;
  flex-grow: 1;
}
.song-title {
  background: blue;
  white-space: nowrap;
  overflow: hidden;
  text-overflow: ellipsis;
  flex-grow: 1;
}

<div class="wrapper">
  <ul>
    <li></li>
    <li></li>
    <li></li>
  </ul>
  <div class="song-wrapper">
    <span>1:23</span>
    <span class="song-title">This is the song title and I want it to ellipsize if the screen shrinks</span>
    <span>4:22</span>
  </div>
</div>

https://jsfiddle.net/13ohs7jx/

Answer 1

Solution

You have overflow: hidden applied to .song-title.

It also needs to be on the parent:

.song-wrapper {
   overflow: hidden; /* NEW */
   background: beige;
   display: flex;
   flex-grow: 1;
}

.wrapper {
  display: flex;
  align-items: center;
}
ul {
  display: inline-block;
  list-style: none;
  flex-shrink: 0;
}
li {
  display: inline-block;
  width: 30px;
  height: 30px;
  background: red;
  margin-right: 3px;
}
.song-wrapper {
  background: beige;
  display: flex;
  flex-grow: 1;
  overflow: hidden;
}
.song-title {
  background: aqua;
  white-space: nowrap;
  overflow: hidden;
  text-overflow: ellipsis;
  flex-grow: 1;
}

<div class="wrapper">
  <ul>
    <li></li>
    <li></li>
    <li></li>
  </ul>
  <div class="song-wrapper">
    <span>1:23</span>
    <span class="song-title">This is the song title and I want it to ellipsize if the screen shrinks</span>
    <span>4:22</span>
  </div>
</div>

revised fiddle

Explanation

Both .song-wrapper and .song-title are flex items.

.song-wrapper is a child of the main flex container (.wrapper), and .song-title is a child of a nested flex container (.song-wrapper).

By default, a flex item cannot be smaller than the size of its content. A flex item's initial setting is min-width: auto. This means that the text in your flex item is setting the minimum width.

To override this setting you can use min-width: 0 or overflow: hidden.

Although you had overflow: hidden applied to .song-title, you didn't have anything overriding min-width: auto on .song-wrapper.

For a more detailed explanation see this post:

• Why doesn't flex item shrink past content size?