Create collapsible tabs in EJ2 JavaScript Tab control

4 Jan 202510 minutes to read

You can implement collapse and expand functionality in the Tab control by adding and removing a custom CSS class in the click event handler for each tab. Here’s how to achieve this:

  1. Define a CSS class to hide the content: Create a collapse class that sets the display property to none. Add this class to the content element in the created event to initially hide it.

  2. Set up event handlers:

    • Bind the selected event for the Tab to collapse the initially selected Tab item.
    • Bind a custom click handler for the Tab headers.

  3. Implement the collapse/expand functionality: In the event handler, add and remove the collapse class to hide and show the corresponding Tab content.

Here’s an example of how to create collapsible tabs:

ej.base.enableRipple(true);

var actLine;
var trgIndex;

//Initialize Tab component
var tabObj = new ej.navigations.Tab({
    created: tabCreated,
    selected: tabSelected,
    items: [
        {
            header: { 'text': 'Twitter' },
            content: 'Twitter is an online social networking service that enables users to send and read short 140-character ' +
            'messages called "tweets". Registered users can read and post tweets, but those who are unregistered can only read ' +
            'them. Users access Twitter through the website interface, SMS or mobile device app Twitter Inc. is based in San ' +
            'Francisco and has more than 25 offices around the world. Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, ' +
            'Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Noah Glass and launched in July 2006. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, ' +
            'with more than 100 million users posting 340 million tweets a day in 2012.The service also handled 1.6 billion ' +
            'search queries per day.'
        },
        {
            header: { 'text': 'Facebook' },
            content: 'Facebook is an online social networking service headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Its website was ' +
            'launched on February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg with his Harvard College roommates and fellow students Eduardo ' +
            'Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.The founders had initially limited the website\'\s ' +
            'membership to Harvard students, but later expanded it to colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford ' +
            'University. It gradually added support for students at various other universities and later to high-school students.'
        },
        {
            header: { 'text': 'WhatsApp' },
            content: 'WhatsApp Messenger is a proprietary cross-platform instant messaging client for smartphones that operates ' +
            'under a subscription business model. It uses the Internet to send text messages, images, video, user location and ' +
            'audio media messages to other users using standard cellular mobile numbers. As of February 2016, WhatsApp had a user ' +
            'base of up to one billion,[10] making it the most globally popular messaging application. WhatsApp Inc., based in ' +
            'Mountain View, California, was acquired by Facebook Inc. on February 19, 2014, for approximately US$19.3 billion.'
        }
    ]
});
//Render initialized Tab component
tabObj.appendTo('#element');

function tabCreated() {
    // After tab created first tab content and active line are hidden by adding custom class to make it collapse state
    actLine = document.querySelector('.e-indicator');
    document.getElementById('e-content-element_0').classList.add('collapse');
    actLine.classList.add('collapse');
}
function tabSelected(e) {
    // If next tab item selected custom class is removed from content and active line element
    var cnttrgs = document.querySelectorAll('#element.e-tab > .e-content > .e-item');
    for (var i = 0; i < cnttrgs.length; i++) {
        cnttrgs[i].classList.remove('collapse');
    }
    if (actLine !== undefined) {
        actLine.classList.remove('collapse');
    }
    this.trgIndex = e.selectedIndex;
    // Custom click event binding for each tab item to make collapse/expand
    e.selectedItem.onclick = function (e) {
        updateCollapseClass(this.trgIndex);
    };
}
function updateCollapseClass(index) {
    // Custom classes are added/removed from tab content and active line element, when the same tab item again clicked
    var cntEle = document.getElementById('e-content-' + 'element_' + index);
    if (cntEle.classList.contains('collapse')) {
        cntEle.classList.remove('collapse');
        actLine.classList.remove('collapse');
    }
    else {
        cntEle.classList.add('collapse');
        actLine.classList.add('collapse');
    }
}
<!DOCTYPE html><html lang="en"><head>
    <title>Essential JS 2 Tab</title>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <meta name="description" content="Essential JS 2 Tab">
    <meta name="author" content="Syncfusion">
    <link href="https://cdn.syncfusion.com/ej2/29.1.33/material.css" rel="stylesheet">
    <link href="index.css" rel="stylesheet">
    <script src="https://cdn.syncfusion.com/ej2/29.1.33/dist/ej2.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
    <style>
        .e-content .e-item {
            font-size: 12px;
            margin: 10px;
            text-align: justify;
        }

        .container {
            min-width: 350px;
            margin: 0 10px;
        }

        .info {
            margin: 10px;
            font-weight: bold;
        }

        .e-tab .e-content>.e-item.e-active.collapse {
            /* csslint allow: adjoining-classes */
            display: none;
        }

        .e-tab .e-tab-header .e-indicator.collapse {
            /* csslint allow: adjoining-classes */
            display: none;
        }
    </style>
<script src="https://cdn.syncfusion.com/ej2/syncfusion-helper.js" type ="text/javascript"></script>
</head>

<body>
    
    <div id="container">
        <div class="info">
            Collapsible Tabs
        </div>
        <span style="margin: 10px;">
            <i>The active tab can be toggled to expand and collapse its content.</i>
        </span>
        <br><br>
        <div id="element" class="e-background"></div>
    </div>


<script>
var ele = document.getElementById('container');
if(ele) {
  ele.style.visibility = "visible";
}   
      </script>
<script src="index.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
</body></html>