emberx-select

A Select component based on the native html select.

We've tried other select components, and were missing the reliability, maintainability, and accessbility of the native html <select>. <x-select> is a drop-in component to let you use any object for your selectable options. You can use it out of the box, or as a building block of something more ambitious.

The goal of <x-select> is to let you see how it works and style it right in your template, rather than passing in a ball of configuration or wrapping a hard-coded, inaccessible jQuery plugin.

Installation

ember install emberx-select

By allowing arbitrary html to appear in the template of the select element, you can use it just like you would normally. This means things like having <optgroup> tags inside your select, or even plain old <option> elements to represent things like empty values.

XSelect thinly wraps a native <select> element so that it can be object and binding aware. It is used in conjuction with the x-option component to construct select boxes. E.g.

{{#x-select value=bob action="selectPerson"}}
  {{#x-option value=fred}}Fred Flintstone{{/x-option}}
  {{#x-option value=bob}}Bob Newhart{{/x-option}}
{{/x-select}}

the options are always up to date, so that when the object bound to value changes, the corresponding option becomes selected.

Whenever the select tag receives a change event, it will fire action.

If you're just changing a model's property, you don't need action. For example, if you have a model with a status field with an integer, you can do this:

{{#x-select value=model.status }}
  {{#x-option value=1}}Active{{/x-option}}
  {{#x-option value=2}}Inactive{{/x-option}}
{{/x-select}}

Contextual Components

As of version 2.1.0, emberx-select takes advantage of Ember's contextual components feature. Using contextual components allows emberx-select to skip some potentially expensive DOM traversals. This feature works with Ember 2.3.0 and above! If you're using such a version, we highly recommend you use it:

{{#x-select value=model.status as |xs|}}
  {{#xs.option value=1}}Active{{/xs.option}}
  {{#xs.option value=2}}Inactive{{/xs.option}}
{{/x-select}}

If you're using a lower version of Ember, emberx-select will continue to work without block params for the forseeable future.

Multiselect

As of version 1.1.0, emberx-select supports the multiple option. This means you can pass an array as its value, and it will set its selections directly on that array.

{{#x-select value=selections multiple=true action="selectionsChanged"}}
 {{#x-option value=fred}}Fred Flintstone{{/x-option}}
 {{#x-option value=bob}}Bob Newhart{{/x-option}}
 {{#x-option value=andrew}}Andrew WK{{/x-option}}
{{/x-select}}

The selections array will be initialized to an empty array if not present.

Disabling two way data binding

In x-select v2.2.0 we introduced a way to disable two way data binding, which is enabled by default. If you would like to only mutate the value of x-select through actions you can pass an attribute called one-way and set it to true. This will disable two way data binding.

{{#x-select value=willNotChangeOnSelection one-way=true}}
  {{#x-option value="hello" selected=true}}Hello{{/x-option}}
  {{#x-option value="world"}}World{{/x-option}}
{{/x-select}}

If you select the World option in the example above, it will not change the value (willNotChangeOnSelection) to world. Without one-way=true it would change the value.

Action and Action Arguments

The action that is dispatched by x-select whenever the selected value or values change (change event) has a function signature of:

/**
* @param value {Object} the value selected by the user.
* @param component {Ember.Component} the x-select component itself
*/
function (value, component) {
  // action body...
}

Most of the time all you need is the value that has been selected, but sometimes your action requires more context than just that. In those cases, you can associate arbitrary attributes with the component itself and use them later inside your action handler. For example:

{{#x-select action="didMakeSelection" default=anything}}
  <option>Nothing</option>
  {{#x-option value=something}}Something{{/x-option}}
{{/x-select}}

then, inside your action handler:

export default Ember.Route.extend({
  actions: {
    didMakeSelection: function(selection, component) {
      if (selection) {
        this.set('selection', selection)
      } else {
        this.set('selection', component.get('default'))
      }
    }
  }
});

Other Actions

x-select also provides other actions that fire on different event types. These actions follow the HTML input event naming convention.

onblur

onblur fires anytime the blur event is triggered on the x-select component. When the action fires it sends three arguments: the component, the value, and the jQuery event.

onfocusout

onfocusout fires anytime the focusOut event is triggered on the x-select component. When the action fires it sends three arguments: the component, the value, and the jQuery event.

onclick

onclick fires when x-select is clicked. When the action fires it sends three arguments: the component, the value, and the jQuery event.

Test Helpers

Since emberx-select uses internal identifiers as the value attribute, it doesn't integrate with the fillIn test helper. But don't fret, we've automatically injected the test helper into your app.

Using the test helper

As of version 1.1.3 we support both multiselects and regular selects. To use, you need to specify the class on the select as the first argument and the rest of the arguments are the options you'd like to select. For example:

//... Single select
  select('.my-drop-down', 'My Option');
//...

Multiselect

//... Multiselect
  select('.my-drop-down', 'My Option', 'My Option Two', 'My Option Three');
//...

Why am I getting a JSHint error?

You need to run the generator: ember g emberx-select

Why am I getting a "Can't find variable: select" error?

You need to either run the generator (ember g emberx-select) or import the test helper into your test-helper.js file:

import registerSelectHelper from './helpers/register-select-helper';
registerSelectHelper();

EmberX

emberx-select is part of the "missing components of ember" collectively known as emberx:

• emberx-select
• emberx-slider
• emberx-file-input

Other Resources

• EmberScreencasts video on creating select boxes with vanilla Ember and emberx-select

Running Tests

• ember test
• ember test --server

Code of Conduct

Please note that this project is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By participating in this project you agree to abide by its terms, which can be found in the CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md file in this repository.