Creating a content type with dynamic fields

Question

I'm trying to create a content type where the fields are updated dynamically. For example, I could have two term reference fields: Manufacturer and Product Name. When the user chooses the manufacturer in the form, the Product Name field would only display products that have the selected Manufacturer.

Whats the best way to approach this?

Answer 1

You could write some ajax that onchange of the select drop down, you could populate the other list with values that you grab from the database.

$('my-select-dropdown').onchange(function(){
   var options = get_values_from_database($(this).val());
   $.each(options, function(i, val){
     $('new-dropdown').append('<option value="'+val+'">'+val+'</option>');
   });
});

This may be a lot of work, someone may have made a module to do this already.. But doing it the manual way can be loads of fun!

Answer 2

There is Conditional fields module, but stable version is available only for D6.

Answer 3

I would do it with jquery.

1. Create all possible fields for the content type
2. Hide all the fields in your css (display:none)
3. Unhide the fields with jquery depending on the value chosen.

Here is a nice howto to do that, don't know if it's the latest jquery and remember that you have to address the jquery object differently in drupal. I do it the ugly way ;).