CSS style padding for an empty element

Question

I'm generating a page for an upcoming portal site, and I've got an HTML element with some optional content. I'd like the element to not render if it is empty, but adding some padding to it causes it to render. How do I add padding to the content, but only if content is present?

.someElement{padding-top: 5px;}

HTML in question:

<div class="someElement">With padded content</div>
<div class="someElement"><!-- shouldn't render since it has no content --></div>

Basically, I'd like the second element, above, to not take up any space. I'm testing in all major browsers, using XHTML 1.1 doctype.

Answer 1

I can't think of a CSS only way to do that.

I would try to decide whether the element is rendered at the time I know whether there will be any content in it. That is probably the cleanest solution.

Answer 2

I like @pekka 's solution. If you don't want to render an element don't include it :-) Also, shouldn't CSS questions be asked at doctype.com ??

Answer 3

If it's necessary to have the div.someElement in the HTML, the best CSS/HTML way to do that would be to add an extra div around the added content that has the padding property

.someElement > div{padding-top:5px;}

<div class="someElement"><div>Content</div></div>

Otherwise, do as Pekka says, or take a look at having javascript do it for you.

Answer 4

At the point where you populate the optional div, if there is no text to put in it, try changing the CSS display property to none. According to this source (and others), display: none removes the element completely from the document. It does not take up any space, even though the HTML for it is still in the source code.

Answer 5

Give the element an id attribute. You can then use Javascript to check it's innerHTML property once the page has loaded. If innerHTML has a length of zero, then you can set it's display property to none. This page might help if you don't know your javascript.

This is still a mucky way to play. If you know the element shouldn't be rendered before you serve the page it would be better to omit it altogether. If you don't want to omit the element, just hide it, then force it into hiding; style="display: none"

Answer 6

Give the empty element a different class (say someHiddenElement) when you are generating the content. Then add someHiddenElement { display: none } to your style sheet.

Answer 7

You can do the trick with the CSS3 pesudo-class :empty

.someElement
{
    // your standard style
}
.someElement:empty
{
    display:none;
}

Sadly Internet explorer doesn't support that feauture yet. For all the other browsers it shall do just fine...