Joomla Component Development: Searchable category form field

0
votes

I am creating a custom component which allows the backend user to associate a content category with an record in my database table. I would like to have the same form field that is displayed throughout the backend in Joomla where the user is able to filter/search the categories in the drop down by typing.

Example

The joomla website provides this code example:

<field name="mycategory" type="category" extension="com_content" label="Select a category" description="" />

However this only creates a standard drop-down select box that is not searchable.

Looking in 'administrator/components/com_content/models/forms/artile.xml' the category field is listed as:

    <field name="catid"
           type="categoryedit"
        label="JCATEGORY"
           description="JFIELD_CATEGORY_DESC"
        required="true"
           default=""
    >
    </field>

However this gives me a simple text box to enter the category ID into.

How can I easily get the searchable dropdown without programming it from scratch?

2
phpjoomlajoomla3.0custom-component

2 Answers

1
votes

The category field type is a standard form field type so it is available to you anywhere you are creating a form in joomla. You can read more about standard form fields at https://docs.joomla.org/Standard_form_field_types. However the categoryedit field type is something unique/custom to the category manager component. You can read more about custom form fields at https://docs.joomla.org/Creating_a_custom_form_field_type.

In order for you to use custom fields in xml you must declare a path to the where the fields are stored by using addfieldpath attribute in the fieldset tag of your xml file.

Example 

<fieldset addfieldpath="/administrator/components/<component name>/models/fields"></fieldset>

In the example up above the would be com_categories so the full path to use categoryedit would be 

<fieldset addfieldpath="administrator/components/com_categories/models/fields"></fieldset>
0
votes

Adding this line to the template enables the autocomplete feature.

JHtml::_('formbehavior.chosen', 'select', null, array('disable_search_threshold' => 0 ));