Dynamic bootstrap nav wrapping menu items

Question

I have a Bootstrap 3.3.7 page with a navbar component along the top of the page. It all works perfectly when populated with static data, but when I'm trying to populate the menu with new drop down lists based on some ajax loads from the server the menu line wraps even though there is loads of horizontal space.

I assume it is setting some fixed width based on the initial menu, and then failing to cope with the dynamic widening. If I manually narrow the page the point the nav collapses, and then widen it again then the reflow catches up and it all ends up back on one line.

Is there any way to force the Bootstrap nav to reflow programatically?

The specific element I need to make wider is ".navbar-right", and if I hand code CSS to make it wider after the dynamic addition then this works, but I'd rather not hard-code arbitrary constants into the code given that the menus are not constant and the font may change.

Answer 1

Answering my own question (although would appreciate any better alternatives if anyone knows any) - this seems to work OK.

// Perform the dynamic update
var htmlOutput = $.render.mytemplate(params);
$("#mynavtemplate").replaceWith(htmlOutput);

// Measure the total width of the children of .navbar-right
var newWidth = 0;
$(".navbar-right").children().each(function(){ newWidth += $(this).width(); });

// Force .navbar-right to be at least as wide as the sum of children
$(".navbar-right").css("min-width", newWidth);