How to force Container to recalculate own rect_size?

Question

I have a scene setup as the following.

root_node
    center_container
        panel_container
            hbox_container

All 3 containers have 'Shrink Center' as horizontal and vertical size flags.

I dynamically insert other instanced scenes into the hbox_container and also remove them from time to time using script.

My intended behavior is that the panel_container as well as the hbox_container will resize themselves to the smallest possible rect.

It acts as expected when I insert new children, and both panel_container and hbox_container expands to accommodate them. However, when I remove them, they don't shrink back and remain at the last expanded size. Only when I insert new children they change to appropriate size.

How do I force the containers to recalculate size upon removing children?

Answer 1

My trick for forcing a control to update itself is to hide() and then immediately show() it. Not sure if that works here, fingers crossed :)

Answer 2

What seems to work for me is to hide the top level container, that needs to have it's layout recalculated, and then add a deferred call to show it again.

In your case, your top level container of interest is panel_container.

var panel_container = $".".find_node("panel_container")
panel_container.visible = false
panel_container.call_deferred("set_visible", true)