Chakra UI is a popular UI library for React that provides a set of accessible and customizable components out of the box. One of the commonly used components in many web applications is the select dropdown. In this blog post, we will explore how to work with select dropdowns in Chakra UI and some of its features.

Installation

Before we begin, make sure you have Chakra UI installed in your React project:

npm install @chakra-ui/react @emotion/react @emotion/styled framer-motion

Creating a basic select dropdown

To create a select dropdown in Chakra UI, you can use the Select component. Here’s an example of a basic select dropdown with different options:

import { Select } from "@chakra-ui/react";

function SelectDropdown() {
  return (
    <Select>
      <option value="option1">Option 1</option>
      <option value="option2">Option 2</option>
      <option value="option3">Option 3</option>
    </Select>
  );
}

By default, the Select component renders a styled dropdown with options. You can pass the desired options as children to the Select component using option tags. The value attribute specifies the value associated with each option.

Styling the select dropdown

Chakra UI provides various ways to customize the appearance and style of the select dropdown. You can use the variant prop to apply different styles. Here’s an example:

import { Select } from "@chakra-ui/react";

function SelectDropdown() {
  return (
    <Select variant="outline" borderColor="blue.500" borderRadius="md">
      <option value="option1">Option 1</option>
      <option value="option2">Option 2</option>
      <option value="option3">Option 3</option>
    </Select>
  );
}

In this example, we have applied the outline variant to the select dropdown and set the border color to blue.500 with a md border radius.

Handling select events

To handle events like option selection or value change, you can use the onChange prop with a callback function. Here’s an example:

import { Select } from "@chakra-ui/react";
import { useState } from "react";

function SelectDropdown() {
  const [selectedOption, setSelectedOption] = useState("");
  
  const handleOptionChange = (event) => {
    setSelectedOption(event.target.value);
    // additional logic here
  };
  
  return (
    <Select value={selectedOption} onChange={handleOptionChange}>
      <option value="option1">Option 1</option>
      <option value="option2">Option 2</option>
      <option value="option3">Option 3</option>
    </Select>
  );
}

In this example, we are using the useState hook to store the selected option in the component’s state. The handleOptionChange function is invoked whenever the select option is changed, and it updates the selectedOption state value accordingly.

Conclusion

Select dropdowns are essential components in many web applications, and Chakra UI provides an easy and customizable way to work with them in React. In this blog post, we explored the basics of working with select dropdowns in Chakra UI, including creating a basic select dropdown, styling it, and handling select events.

#ChakraUI #ReactUI