Angular Grid Sizing

    There are many different ways to size the IgxGrid in order to accommodate a lot of scenarios that the users can have. While some are straight forward, others might be more complex and that is why we will take each one and look into them in more depth. We will go through setting width and height separately since there are some differences e.g. when using percentages for each.

    When it comes to border and padding size for the IgxGrid, they are taken into its width/height size calculations or also known as Border box sizing. It is applied in all scenarios.

    Note

    If the Border box sizing is overridden by the user we cannot guarantee that the IgxGrid will size correctly.

    Width

    If the width input does not have value assigned, its default value is 100% and the IgxGrid tries to fill the available space. You can check how the grid reacts to it in the Percentages section.

    Note

    Setting manually the width style of the IgxGrid itself will result in an unexpected behavior.

    Null

    The grid's width can accepts value of null, which when set, renders all columns in the DOM. The grid sizes accordingly so there is no grid horizontal scrollbar since column virtualization is not applied.

    • If there are 6 columns and none of them has width defined, the grid will have width of 816px, because each column by default have assigned width of 136px in this scenario. Same will happen if the columns have width in percentages. If vertical scrollbar is rendered or there are features that render additional columns their width will be added also.

    • If there are 6 columns with column width set to 200px they will fit in our window and all will be visible:

    • If there are more columns or ones with bigger width that go out of the browser's view, they will all still render. Let's have the same amount of columns but each with column width of 300px. Since they don't all fit in the browser view area, it will create a scrollbar natively. The next example displays this exact scenario:

    • If the grid has a parent element of any sort and it doesn't have any overflow set, it will still render all columns visible. Otherwise if the parent element has overflow auto or scroll, a scrollbar for that parent element will be rendered natively. The parent has bigger height for easier visualization in the following example.

    Note

    Due to this behavior, if the grid data contains too many columns, it might have significant impact on the browser performance, since all columns would be rendered without virtualization.

    Pixels

    When the IgxGrid width input is set to pixels it will set the whole grid size to that value and it will be static. It will not react to any browser resizing or changes in the DOM, although this is not the case for the grid content:

    • When width is set in pixels in order for the grid to render horizontal scrollbar, its content width needs to exceed the specified grid width. Let's, for example, have the combined width of the columns exceed 1200px. In this case a horizontal scrollbar will be rendered.

    • For scenarios where the grid has a parent element, it depends on the parent styling if it will render scrollbar or not. Everything else related to the grid itself is still retained. If the parent element width is smaller than the grid's width and has overflow style set to auto or scroll, it will render scrollbar natively. For example, if the parent has width set to 1000px and the IgxGrid width is still 1200px, it will look similar to the following illustrations:

    Percentages

    When the width of the IgxGrid is set to percentages it will size the grid according to the parent element's width. If the parent element does not have width specified the IgxGrid will size relative to the browser window.

    • For example, if we set the grid width input to 100% and there is no parent element it will fill 100% of the available width of the browser window. If it is resized the grid will resize as well accordingly.

    • If we set grid's width to 100% and there is a parent element that has specific width of 1200px, this will mean that the grid will size relative to that element and his final width will be 1200px.

    • If we have a parent element with width of 1000px and have the grid's width set to 150%, the calculated grid width will be 1500px. In this case the grid will still render fully visible but if we set overflow: auto of the parent, that parent will render scrollbar on its own.

    Height

    By default if no height is defined for the IgxGrid, it will be set to 100%. You can check how the grid reacts depending on the DOM structure in the Percentages section.

    Note

    Setting manually the height style of the IgxGrid itself will result in an unexpected behavior.

    Null

    The IgxGrid height input can accept null value, which when set, displays all rows with no scrollbar no matter how many they are. In this case, there is no vertical virtualization since the grid renders all rows anyway.

    • If we have data with 14 rows in this case the grid will render all 14 of them and size the grid so all are visible without any empty space inside the grid.

    • If we have 24 rows instead, the grid will still render all rows but since they are too many, they exceed the browser boundaries. That's why the browser itself will render vertical scrollbar by default so the user can scroll down to the rest of the rows.

    • If there is a parent element with defined height, the grid will still render all rows and not be affected. Let's say the parent has height of 650px. If he has overflow set to auto or scroll, it will render a vertical scrollbar but the grid will still be unaffected:

    Note

    Due to this behavior, if the grid data contains too many rows, it might have significant impact on the browser performance, since all rows would be rendered without virtualization.

    Pixels

    Setting the IgxGrid height in pixels is more straightforward since the grid will size to that specific size in all occasions similarly to how width is set in pixels.

    • If we set, for example, the height 500px with 4 rows for our data the grid will sit to that size and since 4 rows are not enough to fill the visible area it is expected to have some empty area.

    • If the number of rows exceeds the visible area of the grid when height is set to pixels a vertical scrollbar will be rendered. For example, a grid with 500px height set and 14 rows will be rendered the following way:

    • If there is a parent element with height defined, unless it has overflow set to auto or scroll, the grid will still be fully visible. Otherwise it will render a scrollbar.

    Percentages

    When the height input is set to percentages the IgxGrid will size based on the parent element height. If the parent element has its height set in pixels or percentages, the grid will size relative to the size of the parent.

    When the parent element does not have defined height, the browser does not assign height to it initially and sizes it based on its children and their size. That is why there is no way for the grid to know what base height to use in order to apply percentage sizing based on it. For this reason, it will render a maximum of 10 rows and if they are more rows, a vertical scrollbar will be rendered. Otherwise, the grid will fit to number of rendered rows. We will look in this scenario in more detail in the next examples.

    Let's have width set to 1200px and the parent element not having any size applied to it:

    • If there are less than 10 rows the grid will try to fit all rows in the `visible area without having an empty space between the last row and the bottom of the visible area. For example, let's have the grid data to consist of 7 rows. The grid will render all 7 rows without vertical scrollbar and without empty space inside the grid.

    • If there are more than 10 rows a vertical scrollbar will be rendered for the rest of the rows and only 10 rows can be visible at any time. In the next example only the row number is increased to 14.

    • If we set the parent element height to 800px and the IgxGrid to 100% height this means that the grid will be sized to 100 percentages of 800px.

    • If the IgxGrid height is set to a number bigger than 100% and the parent element has height, for the parent to render scrollbar it again needs to have overflow set to auto or scroll. Otherwise the grid will be fully visibly and size relative to the parent size.

    • If we want the grid to be sized to 100% from the browser window we would need to set both body and parent grid element heights to 100%. In this case, the parent element can be sized and the grid will size accordingly if the browser is resized.

    Column Sizing

    Depending on the grid size itself, the columns inside it can also be sized differently that could result in scenarios where the grid renders horizontal scrollbar or not. Columns can have width set in pixels, percentages or autosized when nothing is set. We will take a deeper look regarding these scenarios in this section.

    Default

    By default when a column doesn't have a specified width it will try to autosize, so that it fills if any empty space is available in the grid view area. Autosized columns have minimum width of 136px, so if the area available is less than 136px for that column, it will default to that size.

    When the grid is resized in these scenarios, the column width is also updated to reflect the changes, so it fills any new empty space available.

    • If a column does not have specified width and the IgxGrid has width set to null, it will be sized to the minimum of 136px. This means that for a grid with width null and 6 columns that don't have width, each column will be sized to 136px.

    • When there are multiple autosized columns they will divide the available space between each other equally. This means that if we have 6 columns and there is empty area of 1200px, each will size to 200px.

    • If there is available empty space, so that each autosized column will be less than 136px, all autosized columns will default to 136px and the grid will render horizontal scrollbar. In the next example let's have 12 autosized columns and the grid width set to 1000px.

    • If a column does not have width specified, but all other columns have either width in pixels or percentages, that column will try to also fill the available space. For example, if we don't have width set to the first column and all other 5 have width of 100px, the first will fill the rest.

    • Same applies if multiple columns does not have width specified, all will divide the available space between each other equally. In the next illustration the first column has width set to 100px.

    Note

    Feature columns like Row Selector checkbox column and etc. fill additional space that is taken into account when autosizing columns.

    Pixels

    When columns have set specific width in pixels, they stick to that size, unless they are resized manually. Since the combined width of the columns is static, it can be less than the IgxGrid width or exceed it.

    • If the combined width of all columns is less than the IgxGrid width, there would be an empty are inside the grid that the columns wouldn't be able to fill. This is the expected behavior of the IgxGrid. In the next example the columns have 150px width.

    • If the combined width of all columns is bigger than the actual IgxGrid width, a horizontal scrollbar will be rendered. In the next example each of the 6 columns have width of 300px and grid has width of 1200px, which means that the columns combined have excess of 600px that goes out of bounds.

    Auto

    When columns are set to auto their size adjusts to fit the longest word in the column. Empty areas are possible if there are cells with very short values, while other cells have very long ones. In this scenario, all cells in the column would adjust to take the width of the cell with the longest value.

    Percentages

    When columns have set width in percentages, their size is calculated relatively to the grid size. It is similar to how width in pixels works, but provides also responsiveness to the columns which means that when the grid is resized, the columns also will resize accordingly.

    • If the combined width of all columns is less than 100%, similarly to when in pixels, there could be an empty area of the grid that the columns do not cover.

    • If the combined width is exactly 100%, the columns will fill all available space of the grid.

    • If the combined width exceeds 100% in order for the user to be able to see the columns out of view, a horizontal scrollbar is rendered.

    • If columns are set in percentages and the grid width is set to null, it would applywidth of 136px to each column. That is because the columns cannot be sized relatively to the grid, since it doesn't have width itself and relies on its content to be sized when its width is null. In the following example all 6 columns have width set to 50%:

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