Multiselect

The multiselect field displays any number of options in a dropdown selectbox with a search box that helps narrowing down the options. This is perfect if you have lots of options, from which the user can just choose one or more.

Example

fields:
  categories:
    label: Categories
    type: multiselect
    min: 2
    max: 4
    options:
      design: Design
      architecture: Architecture
      photography: Photography
      3d: 3D
      web: Web

Field properties

Dynamic options

Our options query syntax offers a very powerful way of converting pages, files, users, page values and even items in structure fields into automatically generated option lists.

Option queries

fields:
  category:
    label: Category
    type: multiselect
    options:
      type: query
      query: site.children.published

The example above will turn all published main pages of the site into options. The title of each page will be used as the text of the option and the page id will be used as the stored value.

A few more examples

query: site.children.template("project").limit(10)
query: page.images.offset(2)
query: users.filterBy("role", "admin").sortBy("name", "desc")
query: page.links.toStructure

You can start at the site, current page, users collection or the kirby instance to run your query. The result must be a collection of pages, files, users or a structure object

You can use array syntax and nested queries in Kirby's query syntax.

query: site.index.filterBy("template", "in", ["note", "album"]);
query: kirby.collection("some-collection").not(kirby.collection("excluded-collection"))

Getting options from all siblings or the index

query: page.siblings.pluck("tags", ",", true)
query: page.index.pluck("tags", ",", true)
query: site.index.pluck("tags", ",", true)

Custom text and value

To customize the displayed text or the stored value, you can be more specific when defining the query: text and value can be defined with the help of our string template language to get exactly what you want as the result.

category:
  label: Category
  type: multiselect
  options:
    type: query
    query: site.children.published
    text: "{{ page.year }}"
    value: "{{ page.slug }}"

As in the example above, all custom fields of a page can be accessed. You can even combine fields and use field methods:

category:
  label: Category
  type: multiselect
  options:
    type: query
    query: site.children.published
    text: "{{ page.year }} - {{ page.title.upper }}"
    value: "{{ page.slug }}"

Numeric keys

If you want to store numeric keys as values, you have to use the long notation with value and text:

fields:
  category:
    label: Category
    type: multiselect
    options:
      - value: '100'
        text: Design
      - value: '200'
        text: Architecture

Options from other fields

With a query it is not only possible to fetch options from pages, users, files or structure fields. You can also split comma-separated values of fields such as tags or checkboxes in order to create options from the result array.

category:
  label: Category
  type: multiselect
  options:
    type: query
    query: site.taxonomy.split

Of course you get the same flexibility with those array values, to modify the result text and stored value. Each item in the array will automatically be converted into an object with a key and value property. Those properties are regular Kirby content fields and you can use all field methods to work with them further. Items in the array need to be referenced as item

category:
  label: Category
  type: multiselect
  options:
    type: query
    query: site.taxonomy.split
    text: "{{ item.value.upper }}"
    value: "{{ item.value.slug }}"

A custom separator

If the values in a field are separated by something other than a comma, you can of course specify this as well in the query.

category:
  label: Category
  type: multiselect
  options:
    type: query
    query: page.categories.split(";")

Options from structure field

To fetch options from a structure field, you can use the toStructure method and then fetch the text and value from the fields of the structure items:

Assuming we have a structure field like this:

fediverse:
  label: Follow the Kirby Team in the fediverse …
  type: structure
  fields:
    name:
      label: Team Member
      type: text
    fediverse:
      label: Fediverse URL
      type: url

We can fetch the fields by using the keyword item:

contact:
  label: Contact person
  type: multiselect
  options:
    type: query
    query: site.contactoptions.toStructure
    text: "{{ item.name }}"
    value: "{{ item.fediverse }}"

Options via API

If the option queries are not enough or you need to pluck an external source for option data, you can use the API type.

category:
  label: Category
  type: multiselect
  options:
    type: api
    url: https://your-options-api.com/options.json

By default, the API type expects that the JSON endpoint returns an option array like this:

{
  "design": "Design",
  "architecture": "Architecture",
  "photography": "Photography",
  "3d": "3D",
  "web": "Web"
}

The following structure is also supported:

[
  {
    "key": "design",
    "value": "Design"
  },
  {
    "key": "architecture",
    "value": "Architecture"
  }
]

You can be much more specific with the endpoint though and describe which kind of data to fetch and what to convert to text and value - pretty much as with the option queries.

A simple company list example

Let's assume that our JSON endpoint returns the following JSON:

{
  "Companies": [
    {"name": "Apple"},
    {"name": "Intel"},
    {"name": "Microsoft"}
  ]
}

As you can see, the format doesn't follow our expected option format at all. We first need to go down to the companies property and then somehow convert each company object into text and value for the options.

This can be done with our template language:

category:
  label: Category
  type: multiselect
  options:
    type: api
    url: https://example.com/companies.json
    query: Companies
    text: "{{ item.name }}"
    value: "{{ item.name.slug }}"

With the query attribute we can define where to start in the JSON document. This can even go down nested structures or sort entries:

query: Companies.sortBy("name", "desc")

The JSON document is turned into a Kirby structure and thus can be queried and manipulated just like any other data within Kirby.

Afterwards the text and value setting can be modified by defining the template for each item.

Again, each item is being converted to a Kirby object and every property of the object is a typical Kirby field with all the available field methods. We can go pretty wild with this, if we want. Let's just assume we have a little bit more data for each company …

{
  "Companies": [
    {
      "name": "Apple",
      "products": [
        {"name": "MacBook"},
        {"name": "iPhone"},
        {"name": "iPad"}
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Intel",
      "products": [
        {"name": "Intel Core something"}
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Microsoft",
      "products": [
        {"name": "Windows"},
        {"name": "Hololens"},
        {"name": "Xbox"}
      ]
    }
  ]
}

value: "{{ item.name.slug.upper }}"
text: "{{ item.name }} - Products: {{ item.products.count }}"

This would produce the following PHP array of options:

[
  value: 'APPLE',
  text: 'Apple - Products: 3'
],
[
  value: 'INTEL',
  text: 'Intel - Products: 1'
],
[
  value: 'MICROSOFT',
  text: 'Microsoft - Products: 3'
]

Dynamic API URLs

Instead of hard-coding an absolute URL into your blueprint, it's often better to have more control over the API URL. Especially when you are working with different environments (ie. local, staging, production)

The URL option of the API type can also be modified by using the string template language:

category:
  label: Category
  type: multiselect
  options:
    type: api
    url: "{{ site.url }}/my-api/companies.json"
    query: Companies
    text: "{{ item.name }}"
    value: "{{ item.name.slug }}"

With this simple addition, the API URL will always refer to the main URL of the site. You can also access the configuration instead to get even more flexibility

url: "{{ kirby.option('optionApiUrl') }}/companies.json"

Translating options

You can provide different translations of your options' text that are shown depending on the user's Panel language:

options:
  summer:
    en: Summer
    de: Sommer
  autumn:
    en: Fall
    de: Herbst
  winter:
    en: Winter
    de: Winter
  spring:
    en: spring
    de: Frühling

If you prefer to use custom language variables, you can do that via the * key:

options:
  summer:
    *: season.summer
  autumn:
    *: season.autumn
  winter:
    *: season.winter
  spring:
    *: season.spring

Customise search behavior

Multiselect fields with a huge amount of options can get a bit less responsive when all options have to be displayed immediately. For that use case, you can customise the search option a bit more. Instead of just activating/deactivating it (true/false), you can pass suboptions:

search:
  min: 3
  display: 10

Now the filtering of options will only begin when at least 3 characters have been typed into the search input. And only up to 10 options will be displayed (you can still reveal all fitlered options via an extra click).

How to use in templates/snippets

A multiselect field stores all selected values in a comma separated list (value1, value2, value3) You can split this list with the split() method in your templates and then work with the result:

<ul>
  <?php foreach ($page->categories()->split() as $category): ?>
  <li><?= $category ?></li>
  <?php endforeach ?>
</ul>