Has anyone got to get Editor to work with datalists, and if so, could you share the code please.

worldroamer

I am especially interested in the code for the plug-in.

allan

When you say a "datalist" could you clarify what you mean please? Is there a specific plug-in you are looking for, such as Select2 or something else?

Allan

worldroamer

Hi Allen,
For Data-entry, I found the select2 dropdown to be too cumberson for the end-users, and switched to using Datalists instead, with much better user acceptance - smoother input.
"The <datalist> tag specifies a list of pre-defined options for an <input> element. The <datalist> tag is used to provide an "autocomplete" feature for <input> elements. Users will see a drop-down list of pre-defined options as they input data."

allan

Oh yes, sorry - I'd forgotten about the datalist tag. I did actually do some research and prototyping for this as apart of the Editor 2 development work back in January 2021. The primary issue I ran into was that the datalist, unlike a select doesn't have a way to have different labels and values. That effectively makes it useless for things like joined data, which you would think would be a natural use for this kind of thing.

At the time I found this workaround but it doesn't work two labels are the same, which is perfectly reasonable with joined data. It also doesn't allow for a multiple selection like a select tag does.

As a result, I concluded at the time that the datatable field type would be an effective replacement.

It would be possible to create a plug-in for Editor to use a datalist, but the limitations are stopping me from making it a core part of the software (which is a real shame - I'd love to have combi-box functionality without external dependencies).

Allan