CSS Flex Items

Child Elements (Items)

The direct child elements of a flex container automatically becomes flexible (flex) items.

The element above represents four blue flex items inside a grey flex container.

<div class="flex-container">  
    <div>1</div>  
    <div>2</div>  
    <div>3</div>  
    <div>4</div>  
</div>

CSS Flexbox Items Properties

The following table lists all the CSS Flexbox Items properties:

Property	Description
align-self	Specifies the alignment for a flex item (overrides the flex container's align-items property)
flex	A shorthand property for the flex-grow, flex-shrink, and the flex-basis properties
flex-basis	Specifies the initial length of a flex item
flex-grow	Specifies how much a flex item will grow relative to the rest of the flex items inside the same container
flex-shrink	Specifies how much a flex item will shrink relative to the rest of the flex items inside the same container
order	Specifies the order of the flex items inside the same container

order Property

The order property specifies the order of the flex items.

The first flex item in the code does not have to appear as the first item in the layout.

The order value must be a number, default value is 0.

Example: the order property can change the order of the flex items:

<div class="flex-container">  
    <div style="order: 3">1</div>  
    <div style="order: 2">2</div>  
    <div style="order: 4">3</div>  
    <div style="order: 1">4</div>  
</div>

flex-grow Property

The flex-grow property specifies how much a flex item will grow relative to the rest of the flex items.

The value must be a number, default value is 0.

Example: make the third flex item grow eight times faster than the other flex items:

<div class="flex-container">  
    <div style="flex-grow: 1">1</div>  
    <div style="flex-grow: 1">2</div>  
    <div style="flex-grow: 8">3</div>  
</div>

flex-shrink Property

The flex-shrink property specifies how much a flex item will shrink relative to the rest of the flex items.

The value must be a number, default value is 1.

Example: do not let the third flex item shrink as much as the other flex items:

<div class="flex-container">  
    <div>1</div>  
    <div>2</div>  
    <div style="flex-shrink: 0">3</div>  
    <div>4</div>  
    <div>5</div>  
    <div>6</div>  
    <div>7</div>  
    <div>8</div>  
    <div>9</div>  
    <div>10</div>  
</div>

flex-basis Property

The flex-basis property specifies the initial length of a flex item.

Example: set the initial length of the third flex item to 200 pixels:

<div class="flex-container">  
    <div>1</div>  
    <div>2</div>  
    <div style="flex-basis: 200px">3</div>  
    <div>4</div>  
</div>

flex Property

The flex property is a shorthand property for the flex-grow, flex-shrink, and flex-basis properties.

Example: make the third flex item not growable (0), not shrinkable (0), and with an initial length of 200 pixels:

<div class="flex-container">  
    <div>1</div>  
    <div>2</div>  
    <div style="flex: 0 0 200px">3</div>  
    <div>4</div>  
</div>

align-self Property

The align-self property specifies the alignment for the selected item inside the flexible container.

The align-self property overrides the default alignment set by the container's align-items property.

In these examples we use a 200 pixels high container, to better demonstrate the align-self property, in order to align the third flex item in the middle of the container:

<div class="flex-container">  
    <div>1</div>  
    <div>2</div>  
    <div style="align-self: center">3</div>  
    <div>4</div>  
</div>

Example: align the second flex item at the top of the container, and the third flex item at the bottom of the container:

<div class="flex-container">  
    <div>1</div>  
    <div style="align-self: flex-start">2</div>  
    <div style="align-self: flex-end">3</div>  
    <div>4</div>  
</div>