Make JQuery UI Dialog automatically grow or shrink to fit its contents

I have a JQuery UI dialog popup that displays a form. By selecting certain options on the form new options will appear in the form causing it to grow taller. This can lead to a scenario where the main page has a scrollbar and the JQuery UI dialog has a scrollbar. This two-scrollbar scenario is unsightly and confusing for the user.

How can I make the JQuery UI dialog grow (and possibly shrink) to always fit its contents without showing a scrollbar? I would prefer that only a scrollbar on the main page is visible.

Update: As of jQuery UI 1.8, the working solution (as mentioned in the second comment) is to use:

width: 'auto'

---

Use the autoResize:true option. I'll illustrate:

  <div id="whatup">
    <div id="inside">Hi there.</div>
  </div>
   <script>
     $('#whatup').dialog(
      "resize", "auto"
     );
     $('#whatup').dialog();
     setTimeout(function() {
        $('#inside').append("Hello!<br>");
        setTimeout(arguments.callee, 1000);
      }, 1000);
   </script>

Here's a working example: http://jsbin.com/ubowa

The answer is to set the

autoResize:true 

property when creating the dialog. In order for this to work you cannot set any height for the dialog. So if you set a fixed height in pixels for the dialog in its creator method or via any style the autoResize property will not work.

This works with jQuery UI v1.10.3

$("selector").dialog({height:'auto', width:'auto'});

I used the following property which works fine for me:

$('#selector').dialog({
     minHeight: 'auto'
});

Height is supported to auto.

Width is not!

To do some sort of auto get the size of the div you are showing and then set the window with.

In the C# code..

TheDiv.Style["width"] = "200px";

    private void setWindowSize(int width, int height)
    {
        string widthScript =    "$('.dialogDiv').dialog('option', 'width', "    +   width   +");";
        string heightScript =   "$('.dialogDiv').dialog('option', 'height', "   +   height  + ");";

        ScriptManager.RegisterStartupScript(this.Page, this.GetType(),
            "scriptDOWINDOWSIZE",
            "<script type='text/javascript'>"
            + widthScript
            + heightScript +
            "</script>", false);
    }

var w = $('#dialogText').text().length;

$("#dialog").dialog('option', 'width', (w * 10));

did what i needed it to do for resizing the width of the dialog.

If you need it to work in IE7, you can't use the undocumented, buggy, and unsupported {'width':'auto'} option. Instead, add the following to your .dialog():

'open': function(){ $(this).dialog('option', 'width', this.scrollWidth) }

Whether .scrollWidth includes the right-side padding depends on the browser (Firefox differs from Chrome), so you can either add a subjective "good enough" number of pixels to .scrollWidth, or replace it with your own width-calculation function.

You might want to include width: 0 among your .dialog() options, since this method will never decrease the width, only increase it.

Tested to work in IE7, IE8, IE9, IE10, IE11, Firefox 30, Chrome 35, and Opera 22.