With Option, you can define a list of choices a Content Editor can pick from a dropdown. So you don’t have to create a new Collection to reference, or type in the values for every item. Amazing!
Here’s how you might use it: Say you have an Articles Collection, and want each Article to have an associated Category.
You’ll create a new field in the Collection Settings and select the Option field:
And if you later edit the name of a Category option in the Collection Settings, every instance of that Option will update automatically, across your site. And, just like other fields, Option fields can be used to filter Dynamic Lists.
@jeff recently I added to the wishlist the possibility to hide some collections from the content editor UI. Because I want them to see the types of contents but not the types/categories collections that they don’t have to edit.
If I understand well, your new feature acts exactly like if I had a new table/collection for categories, it can even be used to filter lists. So it’s like having a collection that doesn’t appear as a collection, right?
Could you tell us if there are downsides to use the option field instead of a collection?
Thanks and great work. i love that on Webflow, developers who worked on a feature can introduce it themselves, really.
Yes, I have the same question can it be used as a filter list and what are the pros/cons of using this instead of a collection say for categories? Could you still create a dynamic page that shows only posts from specific categories using the new options field?
I suspect that you can’t build a template for it, that it is the same as a collection minus the fact there’s a template page and that it appears as a collection on the content editor UI. It pretty much does what I asked but in a different way… and along the road, it brings more possibility and an ease to build quick categories. By the past I had asked for such a feature on a Drupal project, I wanted the editors to be able to create and populate categories on the fly for some aspects. The dev team didn’t really undertood that and they didn’t develop it. Among the features there was the possibility to add a record right in the list. @jeff for example, you enter a new record in a recipe collection, there’s a Option field for type of vegetable, and the content editor would be able to select the last option “Add one…” and add a missing one.
One thing is sure you never want to explain to clients/content editor what a table/collection and a cross reference is, but it kinda make sense to let them add vocabulary in those tables.
@vincent Not sure that building a template will work in the same way a category Collection does or at least pulling categories to link to. I just gave it a quick test run and it seems if you are creating a dynamic list (say to list categories in sidebar) then you pull from posts and display the Option it’s going to list every posts option. I’ll have to work with it more later and I can see Options being useful but at the moment I think a Categories collection will be more versatile.
Disclaimer, I only spent about 10 minutes looking at it so I could be entirely incorrect.
You could create a page yourself and filter by Category, but we don’t automatically create a page for each category.
It’s really up to you if you want a detail page for each category. Having a separate collection also lets you associate other information with each Category: color, description, etc. The option field would be a good choice for things like gender, where a dedicated collection and detail page doesn’t really make sense.
You can look at the Webflow site for an example, we have a collection called “Companies” with a “Type” field used for our case studies.
Some things to note: the Option field doesn’t contribute to a site’s item limit or a collection’s 3 Reference limit, and can be displayed on the site through a reference (“Case Study → Company → Type” wouldn’t work if Type were a Reference).
Great to see this new Options field implemented so quickly! Two issues are still stopping me from using it:
I’m getting a 16 options limit error (and frustratingly, it’s only appears after you save the field without error and then save the collection). I need to go from 7:00am to 9:00pm in 15 minute increments: 7:00am, 7:15am, etc. This limit doesn’t even support a USA States or Countries list (which are presented as use-case examples )
It would be nice to be able to duplicate an Options field. As you can see from my use-case, typing all of those times even twice is very time consuming and prone to errors.
As you said @ddp, those 2 points but I kind of need the same option list to go to another collection as well. Copying a field from one collection to another would be cool but I suppose is not possible…
Also, it would be super awesome if I could add those options as a dropdown in the page as well and the dynamic list filters according to the option picked. The only way I can see to do this is to manually adding a dropdown widget and set each link to separate pages where the dynamic list is filtered to match the option.
Hey guys, any way to add multiple selection option to the option field?
example i have a filed named “peak season” for fruits, i would like to choose many months for this and don’t want to use a collection cause i’m running out of reference fields.
Thanks
This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.
Please create a new linked topic if you have further questions.
