Dropdowns

Dropdowns are toggleable, contextual overlays for displaying lists of links and more. They’re made interactive with the included Bootstrap dropdown JavaScript plugin. They’re toggled by clicking, not by hovering; this is an intentional design decision.

Contents

• Contents
• Example
  • Button elements
• Alignment
• Menu headers
• Menu dividers
• Disabled menu items
• Usage
  • Via data attributes
  • Via JavaScript
  • Options
  • Methods
  • Events

Example

Wrap the dropdown’s trigger and the dropdown menu within .dropdown, or another element that declares position: relative;. Then, add the menu’s HTML.

<div class="dropdown open">
  <button class="btn btn-secondary dropdown-toggle" type="button" id="dropdownMenu1" data-toggle="dropdown" aria-haspopup="true" aria-expanded="false">
    Dropdown
  </button>
  <div class="dropdown-menu" aria-labelledby="dropdownMenu1">
    <a class="dropdown-item" href="#">Action</a>
    <a class="dropdown-item" href="#">Another action</a>
    <a class="dropdown-item" href="#">Something else here</a>
  </div>
</div>

Button elements

You can optionally use <button> elements in your dropdowns instead of <a>s.

<div class="dropdown open">
  <button class="btn btn-secondary dropdown-toggle" type="button" id="dropdownMenu2" data-toggle="dropdown" aria-haspopup="true" aria-expanded="false">
    Dropdown
  </button>
  <div class="dropdown-menu" aria-labelledby="dropdownMenu2">
    <button class="dropdown-item" type="button">Action</button>
    <button class="dropdown-item" type="button">Another action</button>
    <button class="dropdown-item" type="button">Something else here</button>
  </div>
</div>

Alignment

By default, a dropdown menu is automatically positioned 100% from the top and along the left side of its parent. Add .dropdown-menu-right to a .dropdown-menu to right align the dropdown menu.

<div class="dropdown-menu dropdown-menu-right" aria-labelledby="dLabel">
  ...
</div>

Menu headers

Add a header to label sections of actions in any dropdown menu.

<div class="dropdown-menu">
  <h6 class="dropdown-header">Dropdown header</h6>
  <a class="dropdown-item" href="#">Action</a>
  <a class="dropdown-item" href="#">Another action</a>
</div>

Menu dividers

Separate groups of related menu items with a divider.

<div class="dropdown-menu">
  <a class="dropdown-item" href="#">Action</a>
  <a class="dropdown-item" href="#">Another action</a>
  <a class="dropdown-item" href="#">Something else here</a>
  <div class="dropdown-divider"></div>
  <a class="dropdown-item" href="#">Separated link</a>
</div>

Disabled menu items

Add .disabled to items in the dropdown to style them as disabled.

<div class="dropdown-menu">
  <a class="dropdown-item" href="#">Regular link</a>
  <a class="dropdown-item disabled" href="#">Disabled link</a>
  <a class="dropdown-item" href="#">Another link</a>
</div>

Usage

Via data attributes or JavaScript, the dropdown plugin toggles hidden content (dropdown menus) by toggling the .open class on the parent list item.

On mobile devices, opening a dropdown adds a .dropdown-backdrop as a tap area for closing dropdown menus when tapping outside the menu, a requirement for proper iOS support. This means that switching from an open dropdown menu to a different dropdown menu requires an extra tap on mobile.

Note: The data-toggle="dropdown" attribute is relied on for closing dropdown menus at an application level, so it’s a good idea to always use it.

Via data attributes

Add data-toggle="dropdown" to a link or button to toggle a dropdown.

<div class="dropdown">
  <button id="dLabel" type="button" data-toggle="dropdown" aria-haspopup="true" aria-expanded="false">
    Dropdown trigger
  </button>
  <div class="dropdown-menu" aria-labelledby="dLabel">
    ...
  </div>
</div>

To keep URLs intact with link buttons, use the data-target attribute instead of href="#".

<div class="dropdown">
  <a id="dLabel" data-target="#" href="http://example.com" data-toggle="dropdown" aria-haspopup="true" aria-expanded="false">
    Dropdown trigger
  </a>

  <div class="dropdown-menu" aria-labelledby="dLabel">
    ...
  </div>
</div>

Via JavaScript

Call the dropdowns via JavaScript:

$('.dropdown-toggle').dropdown()

Options

None.

Methods

Events

All dropdown events are fired at the .dropdown-menu’s parent element and have a relatedTarget property, whose value is the toggling anchor element.

$('#myDropdown').on('show.bs.dropdown', function () {
  // do something…
})