Left aligned and centered grid with flexbox

Question

I\'d like to implement a responsive grid-like layout using flexbox (without media queries). There can be variable number of elements in the grid. Each item should have fixed

Answer 1

One pretty straightforward solution is to just add a lot invisible, zero-height items at the end of your regular items:

<div class="parent">
  <div class="item">1</div>
  <div class="item">2</div>
  <div class="item">3</div>
  <div class="item">4</div>
  <div class="dummyItem"></div>
  <div class="dummyItem"></div>
  <div class="dummyItem"></div>
  <div class="dummyItem"></div>
</div>

and

.parent {
  display: flex;
  align-items: center;
  justify-content: center;
  flex-wrap: wrap;
}

.parent .item,
.parent .dummyItem{
  width: 50px;
  height: 50px;
  background: white;
  margin: 5px;
}

.parent .dummyItem {
  height: 0;
}

If your longest row can have n visible items, you'll need at least n-1 dummy items for this to work.

The only thing that's a little bit off with this is that if there's only one row then the items won't actually be centered; instead they'll be aligned (roughly) to the left.

Link to Codepen.