Getting started with React MultiSelect component

03 Aug 2021 / 4 minutes to read

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

Dependencies

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

|-- @syncfusion/ej2-react-dropdowns
|-- @syncfusion/ej2-react-base
|-- @syncfusion/ej2-dropdowns
    |-- @syncfusion/ej2-base
    |-- @syncfusion/ej2-data
    |-- @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 MultiSelect component, use the following command

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

Adding MultiSelect component

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

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

import { MultiSelectComponent  } 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 MultiSelect component
      <MultiSelectComponent  id='mtselement'/>
    );
  }
}

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

Adding CSS reference

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

/* import the MultiSelect dependency styles */

@import "../node_modules/@syncfusion/ej2-base/styles/material.css";
@import "../node_modules/@syncfusion/ej2-buttons/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 data using dataSource property. Here, an array of string values is passed to the MultiSelect component.

import { MultiSelectComponent } 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', 'Basketball', 'Cricket', 'Football', 'Golf', 'Gymnastics', 'Hockey', 'Rugby', 'Snooker', 'Tennis'];
  public render() {
    return (
        // specifies the tag for render the MultiSelect component
      <MultiSelectComponent id="mtselement" dataSource={this.sportsData} />
    );
  }
}
ReactDOM.render(<App />, document.getElementById('sample'));

Run the application

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

npm start

Source

Preview

index.tsx

index.html

import { MultiSelectComponent } 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 MultiSelect component
      <MultiSelectComponent id="mtselement" dataSource={this.sportsData}  placeholder="Find a game" />
    );
  }
}
ReactDOM.render(<App />, document.getElementById('sample'));

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

<head>
    <title>Syncfusion React MultiSelect</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" />
    <link href="//cdn.syncfusion.com/ej2/ej2-react-buttons/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 MultiSelect input element’s width and the height of the popup list has ‘300px’.

You can also customize the suggestion list height and width using popupHeight and popupWidth properties respectively.

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