Dynamic drop downs in Tridion designing in schema in SDL Tridion 2011 SP1

Question

I am working on a Schema creation in SDL Tridion 2011 SP1. I have struck at one thing.

I have to display three drop downs to user.

1. List: Country
2. List:State
3. List:Location

If the user selects one country in the drop down, need to populate the states according to it. Depending the selected state I have to populate Locations.

I thought of implementing through Categories.

1. Created categories to countries
2. Created States as Abstract Keywords under for each country.
3. Created locations as Normal keywords under every state as normal keywords.

Can any one suggest how to achieve the following:

1. I will have three drop downs, for Country, States, Locations.
2. If the User selects any Country, the states should be populated accordingly and depending on selected state the locations should be populated.

Do I need to do any customization to tridion or it can be implemented in Tridion directly?

Answer 1

Do you really need to select Countries and States? If you select a Location keyword from the taxonomy structure, you are indirectly selecting the Country and State. I would implement this as a single tree type keyword field.

E.g. Select "Dallas" and it will imply that you have selected "Texas" and "USA"

That way you only need one field. In the CME you will see be able to see items classified against USA by including child keywords, and on the Content Delivery side you will be able to query the content.