Welcome back to Wix Ideas! Today, we're diving into how to populate interactive elements on your Wix website using Velo. We'll cover how to dynamically fill elements such as dropdowns, checkbox groups, and selection tags with values from your collections, ensuring no duplicate values.

Populating these elements directly from a collection not only saves time but also ensures consistency and accuracy. Whether you're running a restaurant, an online store, or any other business, this method will streamline your content management process.

Step 1: Understanding the Elements 🧩

First, let’s take a look at the elements:

• Dropdown: You can add choices by clicking on "manage choices" and edit or duplicate options. Adding multiple choices at once is straightforward.

• Checkbox Group: Similar to dropdown, you manage choices the same way.

• Selection Tags: Manage choices here too, although adding multiple choices at a time isn't available directly.

Our goal is to populate these options directly from a collection without manually adding them.

Step 2: Setting Up the Collection 📋

To begin, ensure you have a collection set up in your Wix site. If you don’t know how to create a collection, check out our previous post on understanding content management systems. This comprehensive guide covers everything from creating a collection to displaying data to your users and adding data to your collection.

Here’s a sample collection for our tutorial:

• Cuisine Type: Lists various cuisines offered by the restaurant.

• Dietary Preferences: Lists different dietary preferences.

• Tags: Lists tags describing specials or popular items.

Step 3: Writing the Function 💻

Next, let’s create a function to populate these elements. This function will be a parametric one, which means it can take parameters to customize its behavior.

Here’s the basic code structure:

Explanation:

• wixData.query(collectionID): Queries the specified collection.

• .limit(1000): Limits the number of items pulled in.

• .ascending(fieldID): Orders the items in ascending order.

• .distinct(fieldID): Ensures no duplicate values.

• .then((results) => {...}): Handles the results, mapping them into an array of objects with label and value.

Step 4: Using the Function 🛠️

To use this function for different elements, you just need to call it with appropriate parameters. For example:

Step 5: Ensuring No Duplicates 🔄

The distinct method ensures that even if there are duplicate values in your collection, only unique values will be populated in your elements.

Step 6: Testing and Finalizing ✅

Before publishing, test your site to ensure everything works as expected. Preview your site, and you should see your elements populated with unique values from your collection.

Conclusion 🎉

This method of populating interactive elements dynamically from your collection saves time and ensures consistency across your Wix site. If this tutorial was helpful, please leave a comment and don't forget to subscribe. Your support helps us create more content like this and reach Wix users around the world.

Thank you for reading, and happy coding! 🚀