Unable to hide flex items by changing width or flex-basis

Question

I want to achieve this effect:

In the default state, there are four buttons. One of them is a 'Move' button.

When a user clicks on it, I want to expand the button and show additional text and input.

However I am unable to achieve the 'default state'. The 'To ' always appears. I have tried flex-basis and width: 0px but there is no effect, like so

How can I hide a flex box element without using display:none. The main reason for not using display is because I want to expand the widget with some css animation on width.

Here is the HTML code:

  <div class="multiselect-controls">
    <span class="multiselect-controls-container medium-theme">
      <button type="submit" class="btn btn-multi-select multi-edit">
        <span class="multiselect-text">Edit</span>
      </button>
      <button type="submit" class="btn btn-multi-select multi-copy">
        <span class="multiselect-text">Copy</span>
      </button>
      <button type="submit" class="btn btn-multi-select multi-move" onclick="expandMe();">
        <span class="multiselect-text">Move</span>
        <span class="multi-move-input">
          to <input class="multi-move-to-target" type='text'></input>
        </span>
      </button>
      <button type="submit" class="btn btn-multi-select multi-delete">Delete</button>
      <span class='icon icon-cross close-multiselect-controls'></span>
    </span>
  </div>

and css(less) code:

btn-multi-select {
  display:flex;
  width: 100px;
}

.multi-move-input {
  flex-basis: 0px;
  // overflow: hidden;
  flex-grow: 0;
  flex-shrink: 1;
}

.expanded {
  &.multi-move {
    width: 150px;
  }
  .multi-move-input {
    flex-grow: 1;
    flex-basis: auto;
  }
}

.multi-move-to-target {
  width: 30px;
  height: 20px;
  color: black;
}

Javascript:

function expandMe(event) {
  $('.multi-move').toggleClass('expanded');
}

The code is also available here: http://codepen.io/kongakong/pen/amdrJZ

@Michael_B thanks for the great answer! If you can expand your comment into an answer I will upvote and accept. — Anthony Kong, Sep 15 '16 at 02:33
@Michael_B - `.addClass('expanded')` instead of the toggle would work better for your answer. — misterManSam, Sep 15 '16 at 03:21

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:51

How can I hide a flex box element without using display:none? The main reason for not using display is because I want to expand the widget with some css animation on width.

You can use max-width, which is an animatable property.

Start it at 0, then have it expand to some extra large number. The element will only expand enough to fit content.

.multi-move-input {
  display: inline-flex;
  max-width: 0;
  transition: .5s;
  overflow: hidden;
}

.expanded {
  &.multi-move { }
  .multi-move-input {
    max-width: 200px;
    transition: 1s;
  }
}

revised codepen

Two things to consider:

I've only focused on the hide/show transition, which is your question. But note that the input is inside the button's clickable area. This means when you try to input data it will fire the transition and close the button. This can be fixed with a bit of re-structuring (HTML) and/or re-targeting (CSS).
Button elements as flex containers may cause unexpected behavior in some browsers. See this post: Flexbox not working on <button> element in some browsers

Unable to hide flex items by changing width or flex-basis

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