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Bootstrap Dropdowns

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Basic Dropdown

A dropdown menu is a toggleable menu that allows the user to choose one value from a predefined list:

Example

<div class="dropdown">
  <button class="btn btn-primary dropdown-toggle" type="button" data-toggle="dropdown">Dropdown Example
  <span class="caret"></span></button>
  <ul class="dropdown-menu">
    <li><a href="#">HTML</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">CSS</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">JavaScript</a></li>
  </ul>
</div>
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Example Explained

The .dropdown class indicates a dropdown menu.

To open the dropdown menu, use a button or a link with a class of .dropdown-toggle and the data-toggle="dropdown" attribute.

The .caret class creates a caret arrow icon (), which indicates that the button is a dropdown.

Add the .dropdown-menu class to a <ul> element to actually build the dropdown menu.

Dropdown Divider

The .divider class is used to separate links inside the dropdown menu with a thin horizontal border:

Example

<li class="divider"></li>
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Dropdown Header

The .dropdown-header class is used to add headers inside the dropdown menu:

Example

<li class="dropdown-header">Dropdown header 1</li>
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Disable and Active items

Highlight a specific dropdown item with the .active class (adds a blue background color).

To disable an item in the dropdown menu, use the .disabled class (gets a light-grey text color and a "no-parking-sign" icon on hover):

Example

<li class="disabled"><a href="#">CSS</a></li>
<li class="active"><a href="#">HTML</a></li>
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Dropdown Position

To right-align the dropdown, add the .dropdown-menu-right class to the element with .dropdown-menu:

Example

<ul class="dropdown-menu dropdown-menu-right">
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Dropup

If you want the dropdown menu to expand upwards instead of downwards, change the <div> element with class="dropdown" to "dropup":

Example

<div class="dropup">
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Dropdown Accessibility

To help improve accessibility for people using screen readers, you should include the following role and aria-* attributes, when creating a dropdown menu:

Example

<div class="dropdown">
  <button class="btn btn-default dropdown-toggle" type="button" id="menu1" data-toggle="dropdown">Tutorials
  <span class="caret"></span></button>
  <ul class="dropdown-menu" role="menu" aria-labelledby="menu1">
    <li role="presentation"><a role="menuitem" href="#">HTML</a></li>
    <li role="presentation"><a role="menuitem" href="#">CSS</a></li>
    <li role="presentation"><a role="menuitem" href="#">JavaScript</a></li>
    <li role="presentation" class="divider"></li>
    <li role="presentation"><a role="menuitem" href="#">About Us</a></li>
  </ul>
</div>
Try it Yourself »

Test Yourself With Exercises

Exercise:

Add the required classes and attributes to create a dropdown list.

<div class="">
  <button 
  class="btn btn-primary ">
  Dropdown Example
  <span class="caret"></span></button>
  <ul class="">
    <li><a href="#">HTML</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">CSS</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">JavaScript</a></li>
  </ul>
</div>

Start the Exercise

Complete Bootstrap Dropdown Reference

For a complete reference of all dropdown options, methods and events, go to our Bootstrap JS Dropdown Reference.


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