Chosen - jQuery Example

Chosen is a JavaScript plugin for Prototype and jQuery that makes long, unwieldy select boxes much more user-friendly. For more information (including usage, explanation and faqs), check out the online documentation.

Standard Select

Turns This
Into This

Multiple Select

Turns This
Into This

<optgroup> Support

Single Select with Groups
Multiple Select with Groups

Selected and Disabled Support

Chosen automatically highlights selected options and removes disabled options.

Single Select
Multiple Select

Hide Search on Single Select

The disable_search_threshold option can be specified to hide the search input on single selects if there are fewer than (n) options.

$(".chzn-select").chosen({disable_search_threshold: 10});

Default Text Support

Chosen automatically sets the default field text ("Choose a country...") by reading the select element's data-placeholder value. If no data-placeholder value is present, it will default to "Select an Option" or "Select Some Options" depending on whether the select is single or multiple. You can change these elements in the plugin js file as you see fit.

<select data-placeholder="Choose a country..." style="width:350px;" multiple class="chzn-select">

Note: on single selects, the first element is assumed to be selected by the browser. To take advantage of the default text support, you will need to include a blank option as the first element of your select list.

No Results Text Support

Setting the "No results" search text is as easy as passing an option when you create Chosen:

$(".chzn-select").chosen({no_results_text: "Oops, nothing found!"});

Single Select
Multiple Select

Limit Selected Options in Multiselect

You can easily limit how many options can user select:

$(".chzn-select").chosen({max_selected_options: 5});

If you try to select another option with limit reached liszt:maxselected event is triggered:

$(".chzn-select").bind("liszt:maxselected", function () { ... });

Allow Deselect on Single Selects

When a single select box isn't a required field, you can set allow_single_deselect: true and Chosen will add a UI element for option deselection. This will only work if the first option has blank text.

Right to Left Support

Chosen supports right to left select boxes too. just add "chzn-rtl" in addition to "chzn-select" to your select tags and you are good to go.

<select class="chzn-select chzn-rtl">

Single right to left select
Multiple right to left select

Change / Update Events

  • Form Field Change

    When working with form fields, you often want to perform some behavior after a value has been selected or deselected. Whenever a user selects a field in Chosen, it triggers a "change" event* on the original form field. That let's you do something like this:

    $("#form_field").chosen().change( … );

    Note: Prototype doesn't offer support for triggering standard browser events. Event.simulate is required to trigger the change event when using the Prototype version.

  • Updating Chosen Dynamically

    If you need to update the options in your select field and want Chosen to pick up the changes, you'll need to trigger the "liszt:updated" event on the field. Chosen will re-build itself based on the updated content.

    • jQuery Version: $("#form_field").trigger("liszt:updated");
    • Prototype Version: Event.fire($("form_field"), "liszt:updated");

Custom Width Support

Using a custom width with Chosen is as easy as passing an option when you create Chosen:

$(".chzn-select").chosen({width: "95%"});

Single Select
Multiple Select

Labels work, too

Use labels just like you would a standard select

Setup (for jQuery)

Using Chosen is easy as can be.

  1. Download the plugin and copy the chosen files to your app.
  2. Activate the plugin on the select boxes of your choice: $(".chzn-select").chosen()
  3. Disco.