Multilevel dropdown menu are a popular feature of website design. Allowing users to choose from various options can help make navigation more efficient and organized. Create a dropdown menu that shows a list of filters and their respective sub-filters and can search based on user selection.
Unfortunately, Material UI didn’t provide a clear example to do this, so it requires making do with a combination of different Material UI components. It isn’t easy.
Companies hire react developers to construct a dropdown that can display an arbitrarily deep list of filters and sub-filters and allow users to search through them. Now, let’s get started!
Difference Between The Nested Dropdown And Mega Menu:
There is a way of building a dropdown menu that could list out filters and their sub-filters and perform a search based on user selection. Material UI didn’t provide clear instructions on how to do this, forcing us to piece together different components from the library.
It was a challenge, but I eventually figured out a way to construct a dropdown that could accommodate an arbitrary depth of filters and sub-filters. You can hire React developers to enable users to search through them. Now, let’s get to work!
Rather than requiring users to click through submenus, Mega menus can show the entire website navigation structure in one expansion. This design is constructive for sites with many subcategories and categories such as an online store.
Process To Develop Nested Dropdown For Material UI:
Material UI for React, or MUI, does not include a native nested Dropdown menu. Fortunately, I have created a custom nested dropdown component for use when working with Material UI in React that can provide a convenient way to access multiple options.
This component enables users to select an option from a nested dropdown menu and features smooth transitions between levels. Let’s use the CLI with create-react-app to build a new React project.
npx create-react-app react-multilevel-dropdown-menu
cd react-multilevel-dropdown-menu
npm start
Set Up The React Project Architecture:
Let’s better understand the project by breaking through the user interface into individual components. The numbers seen in the image correspond to each component’s name.
- App:Root/parent element
- Header:rendering the navbar and logo matter
- Navbar:rendering the Menuobject element
- MenuItems:renders discrete objects with dropdown components
- Dropdown:renders the list of options in the menu
From this analysis, we will form five distinct elements. Companies can hire react developers to expand these components once we start the process of routing. This project displays the set of choices routing in the top segment of the webpage, and the same approach will be utilized to show the routing in the sidebar.
Develop The Project Documents:
Let’s make sure that the folder tree is in the src folder. Save and now replace the matter of the src/index.js folder with new code. We brought a CSS folder to give our project the desired “appearance and impression.” Therefore, let’s substitute the styles in the src/App.css with the ones by the multi-level-dropdown-selections project. Once all changes are saved, open the application module in the web browser to view the content.
import React from ‘react’;
import ReactDOM from ‘react-dom/client’;
import App from ‘./components/App’;
// styles
import ‘./App.css’;
const root = ReactDOM.createRoot(document.getElementById(‘root’));
root.render(
<React.StrictMode>
<App />
</React.StrictMode>
);
Render The Top List Of Options
Let’s begin constructing by representing the main menu elements. To achieve this, we will make a src/menuItems.js folder to store the menu of our app. We need to update the components/App.js file to render the Header component, save all files and then check the front.
We will then import the menu items data into the components/Navbar.js lineup, loop through it and represent them in the JSX. Once that is done, save the file and look at the front end. It will give us a basic navigation menu. Lastly, when you hire developers, take it one step further and display a single-level dropdown.
Below is the final coding:
import { menuItems } from ‘../menuItems’;
const Navbar = () => {
return (
<nav>
<ul className=”menus”>
{menuItems.map((menu, index) => {
return (
<li className=”menu-items” key={index}>
<a href={menu.url}>{menu.title}</a>
</li>
);
})}
</ul>
</nav>
);
};
export default Navbar;
Render Single-Level Dropdown:
Let’s go to src/menuItems.js and update the data to include a submenu. We can save the file, ignoring the forward slash / in the submenu URLs since it won’t affect the nested route. The Navbar component renders the menu items based on the data we passed through the MenuItems component via props.
We’ll open the components/MenuItems.js file to view how the items are displayed. The button element is used to open the dropdown menu. If a link tag is used, hire react developers who need to add a role=”button” for assistive technology such as screen readers.
The Dropdown component is imported, and the submenu items are passed via a prop. We’ll open the components/Dropdown.js file to access the prop and render the submenu. After saving all the files, we can open the src/App.css file and comment out the display: none; property to view the dropdown menus.
This property initially sets the dropdown to be hidden and only opens when interacted with.
Here is the final coding:
const Dropdown = ({ submenus }) => {
return (
<ul className=”dropdown”>
{submenus.map((submenu, index) => (
<li key={index} className=”menu-items”>
<a href={submenu.url}>{submenu.title}</a>
</li>
))}
</ul>
);
};
export default Dropdown
Use Autocomplete Elements:
Autocomplete is similar to the Select component in providing a list of options with a multi-select feature. However, it is an improved version of text input with a panel of suggested options.
It is an excellent alternative to more complex features and can help users quickly locate and select from a list of options as they type. Autocomplete is a more efficient and effective way to navigate and select a value from a list of choices. You can also learn here DropDown OnChange Event using ReactJS with us.
Connect To React App With Browser URL:
In the src/index.js file, let’s wrap the App component in a Router component. Save the file and make sure the app still runs correctly. Below is the code:
// …
import { BrowserRouter } from ‘react-router-dom’;
const root = ReactDOM.createRoot(document.getElementById(‘root’));
root.render(
<React.StrictMode>
<BrowserRouter>
<App />
</BrowserRouter>
</React.StrictMode>
);
Conclusion:
In conclusion, when you hire React developers who quickly set up a multilevel dropdown menu in our React project. All we have to do is add the menus and submenus to the data file, and it will be automatically shown in the user interface. We must be aware of the number of levels we create so that the user experience isn’t impacted negatively.