Getting started with React DropDownList component

11 Jan 2022 / 4 minutes to read

This section briefly explains how to create a simple DropDownList component and configure its available functionalities in React.

To get start quickly with React DropDownList, you can check on this video:

Dependencies

The following list of dependencies are required to use the DropDownList component in your application.

|-- @syncfusion/ej2-react-dropdowns
    |-- @syncfusion/ej2-base
    |-- @syncfusion/ej2-data
    |-- @syncfusion/ej2-react-base
    |-- @syncfusion/ej2-dropdowns
        |-- @syncfusion/ej2-lists
        |-- @syncfusion/ej2-inputs
        |-- @syncfusion/ej2-navigations
        |-- @syncfusion/ej2-popups
            |-- @syncfusion/ej2-buttons

Installation and configuration

You can use Create-react-app to setup the applications. To install create-react-app run the following command.

npm install -g create-react-app

Start a new project using create-react-app command as follows

create-react-app quickstart --scripts-version=react-scripts-ts

cd quickstart

Adding syncfusion packages

All the available Essential JS 2 packages are published in npmjs.com public registry. You can choose the component that you want to install.

To install DropDownList component, use the following command

npm install @syncfusion/ej2-react-dropdowns –save

Adding DropDownList component

Now, you can start adding DropDownList component in the application. For getting started, add the DropDownList component in src/App.tsx file using following code.

Add the below code in the src/App.tsx to initialize the DropDownList.

import { DropDownListComponent } from '@syncfusion/ej2-react-dropdowns';
import * as React from 'react';
import * as ReactDOM from "react-dom";

export default class App extends React.Component<{}, {}> {
  public render() {
    return (
       // specifies the tag for render the DropDownList component
      <DropDownListComponent id='ddlelement'/>
    );
  }
}

ReactDOM.render(<App />, document.getElementById('sample'));

Adding CSS reference

Import the DropDownList component required CSS references as follows in src/App.css.

/* import the DropDownList dependency styles */

@import "../node_modules/@syncfusion/ej2-base/styles/material.css";
@import "../node_modules/@syncfusion/ej2-inputs/styles/material.css";
@import "../node_modules/@syncfusion/ej2-react-dropdowns/styles/material.css";

Binding data source

After initialization, populate the DropDownList with data using the dataSource property. Here, an array of string values is passed to the DropDownList component.

import { DropDownListComponent } from '@syncfusion/ej2-react-dropdowns';
import * as React from 'react';
import * as ReactDOM from 'react-dom';

export default class App extends React.Component<{}, {}> {
  // define the array of data
  private sportsData: string[] = ['Badminton', 'Cricket', 'Football', 'Golf', 'Tennis'];
  public render() {
    return (
        // specifies the tag for render the DropDownList component
      <DropDownListComponent id="ddlelement" dataSource={this.sportsData} />
    );
  }
}
ReactDOM.render(<App />, document.getElementById('sample'));

Run the application

After completing the configuration required to render a basic DropDownList, run the following command to display the output in your default browser.

npm start

Source

Preview

index.tsx

index.html

import { DropDownListComponent } from '@syncfusion/ej2-react-dropdowns';
import * as React from 'react';
import * as ReactDOM from 'react-dom';

export default class App extends React.Component<{}, {}> {
  // define the array of data
  private sportsData: string[] = ['Badminton', 'Cricket', 'Football', 'Golf', 'Tennis'];
  public render() {
    return (
        // specifies the tag for render the DropDownList component
      <DropDownListComponent id="ddlelement" dataSource={this.sportsData}  placeholder="Select a game" />
    );
  }
}
ReactDOM.render(<App />, document.getElementById('sample'));

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">

<head>
    <title>Syncfusion React DropDownList</title>
    <meta charset="utf-8" />
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />
    <meta name="description" content="Essential JS 2 for React Components" />
    <meta name="author" content="Syncfusion" />
    <link href="//cdn.syncfusion.com/ej2/ej2-base/styles/material.css" rel="stylesheet" />
    <link href="//cdn.syncfusion.com/ej2/ej2-react-inputs/styles/material.css" rel="stylesheet" />
    <link href="//cdn.syncfusion.com/ej2/ej2-react-dropdowns/styles/material.css" rel="stylesheet" />
    <script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/systemjs/0.19.38/system.js"></script>
    <script src="systemjs.config.js"></script>
    <style>
        #loader {
            color: #008cff;
            height: 40px;
            left: 45%;
            position: absolute;
            top: 45%;
            width: 30%;
        }
    </style>
</head>

<body>
    <div id='sample' style="margin: 20px auto 0; width:250px;">
        <div id='loader'>Loading....</div>
    </div>
</body>

</html>

By default, the width of the popup list automatically adjusts according to the DropDownList input element’s width, and the height of the popup list has ‘300px’.

The height and width of the popup list can also be customized using the popupHeight and popupWidth properties respectively.

In the following sample, popup list’s width and height are configured.