How to get the <td> in HTML tables to fit content, and let a specific <td> fill in the rest

Question

This is a hypothetical example:

I want to have every single column's width to fit its content size, and leave the rest of the space for the one column with the "absorbing-column" class, so that it looks like this:

| HTML                                                                   | 100%
| body                                                                   | 100%
| table                                                                  | 100%
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Column A | Column B       | Column C | Column D                        |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Column A | Column B lorem | Column C | Column D                        |
| Column A | Column B       | Column C | Column D                        |
| Column A | Column B       | Column C | Column D                        |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|

You see, Column B is a bit bigger than the rest due to the extra data in the first row, but Column D always uses up the remaining space.

I played around with max-width, min-width, auto, etc. and could not figure out how to make this work.

In other words, I want all columns to take whatever width they need and not more, and then I want Column D to use up all of the remaining space inside the 100% width table.

Answer 1

Define width of .absorbing-column

Set table-layout to auto and define an extreme width on .absorbing-column.

Here I have set the width to 100% because it ensures that this column will take the maximum amount of space allowed, while the columns with no defined width will reduce to fit their content and no further.

This is one of the quirky benefits of how tables behave. The table-layout: auto algorithm is mathematically forgiving.

You may even choose to define a min-width on all td elements to prevent them from becoming too narrow and the table will behave nicely.

table {
    table-layout: auto;
    border-collapse: collapse;
    width: 100%;
}
table td {
    border: 1px solid #ccc;
}
table .absorbing-column {
    width: 100%;
}

<table>
  <thead>
    <tr>
      <th>Column A</th>
      <th>Column B</th>
      <th>Column C</th>
      <th class="absorbing-column">Column D</th>
    </tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td>Data A.1 lorem</td>
      <td>Data B.1 ip</td>
      <td>Data C.1 sum l</td>
      <td>Data D.1</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>Data A.2 ipsum</td>
      <td>Data B.2 lorem</td>
      <td>Data C.2 some data</td>
      <td>Data D.2 a long line of text that is long</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>Data A.3</td>
      <td>Data B.3</td>
      <td>Data C.3</td>
      <td>Data D.3</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>