Regardless of what UX designers may say about nested menu (submenus or even sub-submenus), sometimes you need to make one. I couldn’t find clear simple guidance for this, so I cobbled one together by following various examples and watching a few youtube videos. Finally, it made sense what is needed — You need to set the data-bs-auto-close
attribute to ‘outside’ for items in the menu that are going to contain a submenu so that they pop open the submenu instead of simply disappearing. No javascript required.
<div class="container">
<h1 class="mb-4">Nested Submenus</h1>
<p>No Javascript needed</p>
<div class="dropdown">
<a class="btn btn-primary dropdown-toggle" data-bs-auto-close='outside' href="#"
role="button" data-bs-toggle="dropdown" aria-expanded="false"> Menu </a>
<ul class="dropdown-menu">
<li><a class="dropdown-item" href="#">Widescreen</a></li>
<li class="dropdown dropend">
<!-- the key is the data-bs-auto-close attribute being set to Outside for anything that contains a submenu -->
<a class="dropdown-item dropdown-toggle" href="#"
data-bs-auto-close='outside'
data-bs-toggle="dropdown" aria-haspopup="true" aria-expanded="false">Submenu 001</a>
<ul class="dropdown-menu">
<li><a class="dropdown-item" href="#">Bonjour!</a></li>
<li class="dropdown dropend">
<a class="dropdown-item dropdown-toggle" href="#" data-bs-toggle="dropdown" aria-haspopup="true"
aria-expanded="false">Submenu 001 001</a>
<ul class="dropdown-menu" >
<li><a class="dropdown-item" href="#">Eat</a></li>
<li><a class="dropdown-item" href="#">More</a></li>
<li><a class="dropdown-item" href="#">Beans</a></li>
<li><a class="dropdown-item" href="#">On Toast</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a class="dropdown-item" href="#">Drink Coffee</a></li>
<li><a class="dropdown-item" href="#">Make Friends</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a class="dropdown-item" href="#">Don't forget to Exercise</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
The same code is here on Codeply: https://www.codeply.com/p/XzzSC2FZ7O
You obviously need to customize this to your requirements and fill in any necessary accessibility tags.
To all the people (or AIs) from whom I derived knowledge in the crafting of this post, I say: thank you.
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I spent some days trying to solve the submenu dropdowns in Bootstrap for working in phones. This was the unique and efficient solution.
The best for you!!!
Hi, Thank you very much for this very practical solution. I’m now trying to combine it with bootstrap5.2 scrollspy but I can’t highlight the top level parent. Have you ever done this?
Unfortunately, I’ve not used scrollspy before so I’m unable to advise you.
OK I found a solution without JS if it can help I used the css a:has(+ul li .active), with a the top level parent and active the Bootstrap class.
If you have an example, you can post it onto codeply. Someone might find it useful in the future 🙂