Determine if an HTML element's content overflows

Admin 1
Viewed 85019

Can I use JavaScript to check (irrespective of scrollbars) if an HTML element has overflowed its content? For example, a long div with small, fixed size, the overflow property set to visible, and no scrollbars on the element.

css html javascript
6 Answers

Normally, you can compare the client[Height|Width] with scroll[Height|Width] in order to detect this... but the values will be the same when overflow is visible. So, a detection routine must account for this:

// Determines if the passed element is overflowing its bounds,
// either vertically or horizontally.
// Will temporarily modify the "overflow" style to detect this
// if necessary.
function checkOverflow(el)
{
   var curOverflow = el.style.overflow;

   if ( !curOverflow || curOverflow === "visible" )
      el.style.overflow = "hidden";

   var isOverflowing = el.clientWidth < el.scrollWidth 
      || el.clientHeight < el.scrollHeight;

   el.style.overflow = curOverflow;

   return isOverflowing;
}

Tested in FF3, FF40.0.2, IE6, Chrome 0.2.149.30.

Shog9_8110
user_181460

Another way is compare the element width with its parent's width:

function checkOverflow(elem) {
    const elemWidth = elem.getBoundingClientRect().width
    const parentWidth = elem.parentElement.getBoundingClientRect().width

    return elemWidth > parentWidth
}
user_47189370

With jQuery you could do:

if ( $(".inner-element").prop('scrollHeight') > $(".inner-element").height() ) {

    console.log("element is overflowing");

} else {

    console.log("element is not overflowing");

}

Change to .prop('scrollWidth') and .width() if needed.

user_9367030
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