How to use Checkbox inside Select Option

Question

You cannot place checkbox inside select element but you can get the same functionality by using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Here is a possible working solution. The explanation follows.

enter image description here

Code:

var expanded = false;

function showCheckboxes() {
  var checkboxes = document.getElementById("checkboxes");
  if (!expanded) {
    checkboxes.style.display = "block";
    expanded = true;
  } else {
    checkboxes.style.display = "none";
    expanded = false;
  }
}

.multiselect {
  width: 200px;
}

.selectBox {
  position: relative;
}

.selectBox select {
  width: 100%;
  font-weight: bold;
}

.overSelect {
  position: absolute;
  left: 0;
  right: 0;
  top: 0;
  bottom: 0;
}

#checkboxes {
  display: none;
  border: 1px #dadada solid;
}

#checkboxes label {
  display: block;
}

#checkboxes label:hover {
  background-color: #1e90ff;
}

<form>
  <div class="multiselect">
    <div class="selectBox" onclick="showCheckboxes()">
      <select>
        <option>Select an option</option>
      </select>
      <div class="overSelect"></div>
    </div>
    <div id="checkboxes">
      <label for="one">
        <input type="checkbox" id="one" />First checkbox</label>
      <label for="two">
        <input type="checkbox" id="two" />Second checkbox</label>
      <label for="three">
        <input type="checkbox" id="three" />Third checkbox</label>
    </div>
  </div>
</form>

Explanation:

At first we create a select element that shows text "Select an option", and empty element that covers (overlaps) the select element (<div class="overSelect">). We do not want the user to click on the select element - it would show an empty options. To overlap the element with other element we use CSS position property with value relative | absolute.

To add the functionality we specify a JavaScript function that is called when the user clicks on the div that contains our select element (<div class="selectBox" onclick="showCheckboxes()">).

We also create div that contains our checkboxes and style it using CSS. The above mentioned JavaScript function just changes <div id="checkboxes"> value of CSS display property from "none" to "block" and vice versa.

The solution was tested in the following browsers: Internet Explorer 10, Firefox 34, Chrome 39. The browser needs to have JavaScript enabled.

More information:

CSS positioning

How to overlay one div over another div

http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_positioning.asp

CSS display property

http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/pr_class_display.asp

The best plugin so far is Bootstrap Multiselect

EDIT: I wrote this a very long time ago. I would not recommend using jQuery anymore. You should rather learn a reactive framework like Vue.js, React, or Angular where you have plenty of modules to choose from. I'm sure you'll find what you need. I found this one for instance from a quick Google search.

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>

<title>jQuery Multi Select Dropdown with Checkboxes</title>

<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/bootstrap-3.1.1.min.css" type="text/css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/bootstrap-multiselect.css" type="text/css" />

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.8.2.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/bootstrap-3.1.1.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="js/bootstrap-multiselect.js"></script>

</head>

<body>

<form id="form1">

<div style="padding:20px">

<select id="chkveg" multiple="multiple">
    
    <option value="cheese">Cheese</option>
    <option value="tomatoes">Tomatoes</option>
    <option value="mozarella">Mozzarella</option>
    <option value="mushrooms">Mushrooms</option>
    <option value="pepperoni">Pepperoni</option>
    <option value="onions">Onions</option>

</select>

<br /><br />

<input type="button" id="btnget" value="Get Selected Values" />

<script type="text/javascript">

$(function() {
    
    $('#chkveg').multiselect({
        
        includeSelectAllOption: true
    });
    
    $('#btnget').click(function(){
        
        alert($('#chkveg').val());
    });
});

</script>

</div>

</form>

</body>
</html>

Here's a demo:

$(function() {

  $('#chkveg').multiselect({
    includeSelectAllOption: true
  });

  $('#btnget').click(function() {
    alert($('#chkveg').val());
  });
});

.multiselect-container>li>a>label {
  padding: 4px 20px 3px 20px;
}

<link href="https://unpkg.com/bootstrap@3.3.2/dist/css/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet"/>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/jquery@3.3.1/dist/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/bootstrap@3.3.2/dist/js/bootstrap.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/bootstrap-multiselect@0.9.13/dist/js/bootstrap-multiselect.js"></script>
<link href="https://unpkg.com/bootstrap-multiselect@0.9.13/dist/css/bootstrap-multiselect.css" rel="stylesheet"/>

<form id="form1">
  <div style="padding:20px">

    <select id="chkveg" multiple="multiple">
      <option value="cheese">Cheese</option>
      <option value="tomatoes">Tomatoes</option>
      <option value="mozarella">Mozzarella</option>
      <option value="mushrooms">Mushrooms</option>
      <option value="pepperoni">Pepperoni</option>
      <option value="onions">Onions</option>
    </select>
    
    <br /><br />

    <input type="button" id="btnget" value="Get Selected Values" />
  </div>
</form>

For a Pure CSS approach, you can use the :checked selector combined with the ::before selector to inline conditional content.

Just add the class select-checkbox to your select element and include the following CSS:

.select-checkbox option::before {
  content: "\2610";
  width: 1.3em;
  text-align: center;
  display: inline-block;
}
.select-checkbox option:checked::before {
  content: "\2611";
}

You can use plain old unicode characters (with an escaped hex encoding) like these:

☐ Ballot Box - \2610
☑ Ballot Box With Check - \2611

Or if you want to spice things up, you can use these FontAwesome glyphs

.fa-square-o - \f096
.fa-check-square-o - \f046

Screenshot

Demo in jsFiddle & Stack Snippets

select {
  width: 150px;
}

.select-checkbox option::before {
  content: "\2610";
  width: 1.3em;
  text-align: center;
  display: inline-block;
}
.select-checkbox option:checked::before {
  content: "\2611";
}

.select-checkbox-fa option::before {
  font-family: FontAwesome;
  content: "\f096";
  width: 1.3em;
  display: inline-block;
  margin-left: 2px;
}
.select-checkbox-fa option:checked::before {
  content: "\f046";
}

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/font-awesome/4.7.0/css/font-awesome.css">

<h3>Unicode</h3>
<select multiple="" class="form-control select-checkbox" size="5">
  <option>Dog</option>
  <option>Cat</option>
  <option>Hippo</option>
  <option>Dinosaur</option>
  <option>Another Dog</option>
</select>

<h3>Font Awesome</h3>
<select multiple="" class="form-control select-checkbox-fa" size="5">
  <option>Dog</option>
  <option>Cat</option>
  <option>Hippo</option>
  <option>Dinosaur</option>
  <option>Another Dog</option>
</select>

Note: Beware of IE compatibility issues however

Try multiple-select, especially multiple-items. Looks to be much clean and managed solution, with tons of examples. You can also view the source.

<div>
  <div class="form-group row">
    <label class="col-sm-2">
      Basic Select
    </label>

    <div class="col-sm-10">
      <select multiple="multiple">
        <option value="1">1</option>
        <option value="2">2</option>
      </select>
    </div>
  </div>

  <div class="form-group row">
    <label class="col-sm-2">
      Group Select
    </label>

    <div class="col-sm-10">
      <select multiple="multiple">
        <optgroup label="Group 1">
          <option value="1">1</option>
          <option value="2">2</option>
        </optgroup>
        <optgroup label="Group 2">
          <option value="6">6</option>
          <option value="7">7</option>
        </optgroup>
        <optgroup label="Group 3">
          <option value="11">11</option>
          <option value="12">12</option>
        </optgroup>
      </select>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

<script>
  $(function() {
    $('select').multipleSelect({
      multiple: true,
      multipleWidth: 60
    })
  })
</script>

How to use Checkbox inside Select Option

Tags:

javascript

html

css

html-select

Code:

Explanation:

More information:

Demo in jsFiddle & Stack Snippets

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How to use Checkbox inside Select Option

Tags:

javascript

html

css

html-select

Code:

Explanation:

More information:

Demo in jsFiddle & Stack Snippets

Related questions

Recent Activity

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