Getting elements that exceed the maxium value. JAVASCRIPT/JQUERY

Question

greetings,

I'm new with java script so bear with me! I want to achieve something using JQuery selectors.

I have a list menu. It looks like this...

<ul style="width:auto">
<li>item one</li>
<li>item two</li>
<li>item three</li>
<li>item four</li>
<li>item five</li>
</ul>

Okay, so currently I'm using the parseInt function to retrieve the integer value of the current width of the ul.

var ul = $("ul");
var currentWidth = parseInt(ul.width);
var maxWidth = 400;

With that giving me the current width I'd like to now create an if statement. This is where it gets really tricky for me.

if(currentWidth <= maxWidth){
alert('great job, do nothing');
}
else {
  // WHAT DO I DO?!
  // I need to take all the elements that makes the ul exceed that maxWidth variable and assign them to a new array called extraItems
}

So how do I get those items. I fear this is so far beyond the basic!

Any help would be so greatly appreciated!

Objective example image: imageShack link

Answer 1

else {
   var extraItems = [];
   $('ul li').each(function(i, e) {
      if ($(e).width() > maxWidth) {
         $(e).remove(); //? dunno if you want to remove em, but here's how
         extraItems.push(e);
      }
   });
   ...
}

Answer 2

Check out this community wiki post by Andreas Grech... you can make your own selector to do this as well.

Edit: Oh and after reading what your ultimate goal is (hiding the overflow) why not just use the CSS class overflow:hidden on your content wrapper, then use a plugin like scrollTo to move it around?

Edit #2 LOL sorry for editing so much... if you are just doing this to learn, try this code (I also have it running in a pastebin), also make sure you look at the CSS, the li by default will have 100% width:

$(document).ready(function(){
 var ul = $("ul");
 var currentWidth = ul.width();
 var maxWidth = 400;
 if(currentWidth <= maxWidth){
  alert('great job, do nothing');
 } else {
  var liWidth = 0;
  var done = false;
  ul.find('li').each(function(indx){
   liWidth += $(this).width();
   if (liWidth > maxWidth && !done){
    ul.find('li:gt(' + (indx-1) + ')').hide();
    var done = true;
   }
  })
 }
 var savedLi = ul.find('li:hidden');
 alert( savedLi.length + ' elements were hidden');
})

Answer 3

Here is how I would deal with it:

// given these values:
var ul = $("ul");
var maxWidth = 200;

// the total width counter
var acc = 0;  

// find the li's and use the map (or filter) function to filter away unwanted elements
var overflow = ul.find('li').map(function(){

  // add current elm's width to our total
  acc += $(this).outerWidth();

  // within bounds - return nothing
  if ( acc < maxWidth ) {
    return null;
  }
  // limit reached - return element
  else {
    return this;
  }

});

// we are left with only the "overflow" elements...
overflow.hide();