Tagify - tags input component

Transforms an input field or a textarea into a Tags component, in an easy, customizable way, with great performance and small code footprint, exploded with features.
Vanilla ⚡ React ⚡ Vue ⚡ Angular

👉 See Many Examples 👈

Table of Contents

• Table of Contents
• Installation
  • Option 1 - import from CDN:
  • option 2 - import as a Node module:
• Basic Usage Examples
  • Debugging
• Features
• Building the project
  • Output files:
• Adding tags dynamically
• Output value
  • Modify original input value format
• Ajax whitelist
• Persisted data
• Edit tags
• Validations
• Drag & Sort
  • Integration example:
• DOM Templates
  • Example of overriding the tag template:
• Suggestions list
  • Example for a suggestion item alias
  • Example whitelist:
• Mixed-Content
• Single-Value
• React
  • Update regarding onChange prop:
    • Updating the component's state
• Vue
• jQuery version
  • jQuery.tagify.js
• HTML input & textarea attributes
• Caveats
• FAQ
• CSS Variables
  • Suggestions Dropdown CSS variables
  • Full list of Tagify's SCSS variables
• Methods
• Events
• Hooks
• Settings

Installation

Option 1 - import from CDN:

Place these lines before any other code which is (or will be) using Tagify (Example here)

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@yaireo/tagify"></script>
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@yaireo/tagify/dist/tagify.polyfills.min.js"></script>
<link href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@yaireo/tagify/dist/tagify.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

Tagify will then be available globally. To load specific version use @ - for example: unpkg.com/@yaireo/tagify@3.1.0

option 2 - import as a Node module:

npm i @yaireo/tagify --save

Basic Usage Examples

• Many demos with code examples can be seen here
• CodeSandbox live demo

import Tagify from '@yaireo/tagify'

var inputElem = document.querySelector('input') // the 'input' element which will be transformed into a Tagify component
var tagify = new Tagify(inputElem, {
  // A list of possible tags. This setting is optional if you want to allow
  // any possible tag to be added without suggesting any to the user.
  whitelist: ['foo', 'bar', 'and baz', 0, 1, 2]
})

The above example shows the most basic whitelist array setting possible, with a mix of Strings and Numbers but the array also support Objects whic a must-have property of value:

whitelist: [{value: 'foo', id: '123', email: 'foo@whatever.com'}, ...]

The value property is what will be used when actually defining the value property of the original input element (inputElem in the example above) which was transformed into a Tagify component, and so when the form data is sent to the server, it will contain all the values (which are the selected tags in the component).

For selected tags to show a different text than what is defined in value for a whitelist item, see the tagTextProp setting

⚠️ Important: Don't forget to include tagify.css file in your project. CSS location: @yaireo/tagify/dist/tagify.css SCSS location: @yaireo/tagify/src/tagify.scss See SCSS usecase & example

Debugging

There are several places in the source code which emits console.warn logs to help identify issues. Those will only work if Tagify.logger.enabled flag is set to true. To disable the default logging, set the following global variable:

window.TAGIFY_DEBUG = false

var tagify = new Tagify(...)

Features

• Can be applied to input & textarea elements
• Supports mix content (text and tags together)
• Supports single-value mode (like <select>)
• Supports whitelist/blacklist
• Customizable HTML templates for the different areas of the component (wrapper, tags, dropdown, dropdown item, dropdown header, dropdown footer)
• Shows suggestions list (flexiable settings & styling) at full (component) width or next to the typed texted (caret)
• Allows setting suggestions' aliases for easier fuzzy-searching
• Auto-suggest input as-you-type with the ability to auto-complete
• Can paste in multiple values: tag 1, tag 2, tag 3 or even newline-separated tags
• Tags can be created by Regex delimiter or by pressing the "Enter" key / focusing of the input
• Validate tags by Regex pattern or by function
• Tags may be editable (double-click)
• ARIA accessibility support(Component too generic for any meaningful ARIA)
• Supports read-only mode to the whole component or per-tag
• Each tag can have any properties desired (class, data-whatever, readonly...)
• Automatically disallow duplicate tags (vis "settings" object)
• Has built-in CSS loader, if needed (Ex. AJAX whitelist pulling)
• Tags can be trimmed via hellip by giving max-width to the tag element in your CSS
• RTL alignment (See demo)
• Internet Explorer - A polyfill script should be used: tagify.polyfills.min.js (in /dist) (IE support has been dropped)
• Many useful custom events
• Original input/textarea element values kept in sync with Tagify

Building the project

Simply run gulp in your terminal, from the project's path (Gulp should be installed first).

Source files are this path: /src/

Output files, which are automatically generated using Gulp, are in: /dist/

Output files:

Adding tags dynamically

var tagify = new Tagify(...);

tagify.addTags(["banana", "orange", "apple"])

// or add tags with pre-defined properties

tagify.addTags([{value:"banana", color:"yellow"}, {value:"apple", color:"red"}, {value:"watermelon", color:"green"}])

Output value

There are two possible ways to get the value of the tags:

1. Access the tagify's instance's value prop: tagify.value (Array of tags)
2. Access the original input's value: inputElm.value (Stringified Array of tags)

The most common way is to simply listen to the change event on the original input

var inputElm = document.querySelector,
    tagify = new Tagify (inputElm);

inputElm.addEventListener('change', onChange)

function onChange(e){
  // outputs a String
  console.log(e.target.value)
}

Modify original input value format

Default format is a JSON string:
'[{"value":"cat"}, {"value":"dog"}]'

I recommend keeping this because some situations might have values such as addresses (tags contain commas):
'[{"value":"Apt. 2A, Jacksonville, FL 39404"}, {"value":"Forrest Ray, 191-103 Integer Rd., Corona New Mexico"}]'

Another example for complex tags state might be disabled tags, or ones with custom identifier class:
(tags can be clicked, so delevopers can choose to use this to disable/enable tags)
'[{"value":"cat", "disabled":true}, {"value":"dog"}, {"value":"bird", "class":"color-green"}]'

To change the format, assuming your tags have no commas and are fairly simple:

var tagify = new Tagify(inputElm, {
  originalInputValueFormat: valuesArr => valuesArr.map(item => item.value).join(',')
})

Output:
"cat,dog"

Ajax whitelist

Dynamically-loaded suggestions list (whitelist) from the server (as the user types) is a frequent need to many.

Tagify comes with its own loading animation, which is a very lightweight CSS-only code, and the loading state is controlled by the method tagify.loading which accepts true or false as arguments.

Below is a basic example using the fetch API. I advise aborting the last request on any input before starting a new request.

var input = document.querySelector('input'),
    tagify = new Tagify(input, {whitelist:[]}),
    controller; // for aborting the call

// listen to any keystrokes which modify tagify's input
tagify.on('input', onInput)

function onInput( e ){
  var value = e.detail.value
  tagify.whitelist = null // reset the whitelist

  // https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/AbortController/abort
  controller && controller.abort()
  controller = new AbortController()

  // show loading animation.
  tagify.loading(true)

  fetch('http://get_suggestions.com?value=' + value, {signal:controller.signal})
    .then(RES => RES.json())
    .then(function(newWhitelist){
      tagify.whitelist = newWhitelist // update whitelist Array in-place
      tagify.loading(false).dropdown.show(value) // render the suggestions dropdown
    })
}

Persisted data

Sometimes the whitelist might be loaded asynchronously, and so any pre-filled value in the original input field will be removed if the enforceWhitelist is set to true.

Tagify can automatically restore the last used whitelist by setting a unique id to the Tagify instance, by using the localstorage to persist the whitelist & value data:

var input = document.querySelector('input'),
    tagify = new Tagify(input, {
      id: 'test1',  // must be unique (per-tagify instance)
      enforceWhitelist: true,
    }),

Edit tags

Tags that aren't read-only can be edited by double-clicking them (by default) or by changing the editTags setting to 1, making tags editable by single-clicking them.

The value is saved on blur or by pressing enter key. Pressing Escape will revert the change trigger blur. ctrlz will revert the change if an edited tag was marked as not valid (perhaps duplicate or blacklisted)

To prevent all tags from being allowed to be editable, set the editTags setting to false (or null).
To do the same but for specific tag(s), set those tags' data with editable property set to false:

<input value='[{"value":"foo", "editable":false}, {"value":"bar"}]'>

Validations

For "regular" tags (not mix-mode or select-mode) the easiest way is to use the pattern setting and use a Regex, or apply the pattern attribute directly on the input which will be "transformed" into a Tagify component (for vanilla code where the input tag is fully accessible to developers).

If the pattern setting does not meet your needs, use the validate setting, which recieves a tag data object as an argument and should return true if validaiton is passing, or false/string of not. A string may be returned as the reason of the validation failure so it would be printed as the title attribute of the invalid tag.

Here's an example for async validation for an added tag. The idea is to listen to "add" event, and when it fires, first set the tag to "loading" state, run an async call, and then set the loading state (of the tag) back to false. If the custom async validation failed, call the replaceTag Tagify method and set the __isValid tag data property to the error string which will be shown when hovering the tag.

Note - there is a setting to keep invalid tags (keepInvalidTags) and if it's set to true, the user can see the reason for the invalidation by hovering the tag and see the browser's native tooltip via the title attribute:

{
  empty      : "empty",
  exceed     : "number of tags exceeded",
  pattern    : "pattern mismatch",
  duplicate  : "already exists",
  notAllowed : "not allowed"
}

The texts for those (invalid tags) titles can be customized from the settings:

new Tagify(inputElement, {
  texts: {
    duplicate: "Duplicates are not allowed"
  }
})

Or by directly manipulating the Tagify function prototype:

Tagify.prototype.TEXTS = {...Tagify.prototype.TEXTS, {duplicate: "Duplicates are not allowed"}}

Drag & Sort

To be able to sort tags by dragging, a 3rd-party script is needed.

I have made a very simple drag & drop (~11kb unminified) script which uses HTML5 native API and it is available to download via NPM or Github but any other drag & drop script may work. I could not find on the whole internet a decent lightweight script.

Integration example:

var tagify = new Tagify(inputElement)

// bind "DragSort" to Tagify's main element and tell
// it that all the items with the below "selector" are "draggable"
var dragsort = new DragSort(tagify.DOM.scope, {
    selector: '.'+tagify.settings.classNames.tag,
    callbacks: {
        dragEnd: onDragEnd
    }
})

// must update Tagify's value according to the re-ordered nodes in the DOM
function onDragEnd(elm){
    tagify.updateValueByDOMTags()
}

DOM Templates

It's possible to control the templates for some of the HTML elements Tagify is using by modifying the settings.templates Object with your own custom functions which must return an HTML string.

Available templates are: wrapper, tag, dropdown, dropdownItem, dropdownContent, dropdownHeader, dropdownFooter and the optional dropdownItemNoMatch which is a special template for rendering a suggestion item (in the dropdown list) only if there were no matches found for the typed input, for example:

// ...more tagify settings...
templates: {
  dropdownItemNoMatch: data =>
    `<div class='${tagify.settings.classNames.dropdownItem}' value="noMatch" tabindex="0" role="option">
        No suggestion found for: <strong>${data.value}</strong>
    </div>`
}

View templates

Example of overriding the tag template:

Each template function is automatically binded with this pointing to the current Tagify instance. It is imperative to preserve the class names and also the this.getAttributes(tagData) for proper functionality.

new Tagify(inputElem, {
  templates: {
    tag(tagData, tagify){
      return `<tag title="${(tagData.title || tagData.value)}"
              contenteditable='false'
              spellcheck='false'
              tabIndex="${this.settings.a11y.focusableTags ? 0 : -1}"
              class="${this.settings.classNames.tag} ${tagData.class ? tagData.class : ""}"
              ${this.getAttributes(tagData)}>
      <x title='' class="${this.settings.classNames.tagX}" role='button' aria-label='remove tag'></x>
      <div>
          <span class="${this.settings.classNames.tagText}">${tagData[this.settings.tagTextProp] || tagData.value}</span>
      </div>
    </tag>`,

    dropdownFooter(suggestions){
      var hasMore = suggestions.length - this.settings.dropdown.maxItems;

      return hasMore > 0
        ? `<footer data-selector='tagify-suggestions-footer' class="${this.settings.classNames.dropdownFooter}">
            ${hasMore} more items. Refine your search.
          </footer>`
        : '';
    }
  }
})

Suggestions list

The suggestions list is a whitelist Array of Strings or Objects which was set in the settings Object when the Tagify instance was created, and can be set later directly on the instance: tagifyInstance.whitelist = ["tag1", "tag2", ...].

The suggestions dropdown will be appended to the document's <body> element and will be rendered by default in a position below (bottom of) the Tagify element. Using the keyboard arrows up/down will highlight an option from the list, and hitting the Enter key to select.

It is possible to tweak the list dropdown via 2 settings:

• enabled - this is a numeral value that tells Tagify when to show the suggestions dropdown, when a minimum of N characters were typed.
• maxItems - Limits the number of items the suggestions list will render

var input = document.querySelector('input'),
    tagify = new Tagify(input, {
        whitelist : ['aaa', 'aaab', 'aaabb', 'aaabc', 'aaabd', 'aaabe', 'aaac', 'aaacc'],
        dropdown : {
            classname     : "color-blue",
            enabled       : 0,              // show the dropdown immediately on focus
            maxItems      : 5,
            position      : "text",         // place the dropdown near the typed text
            closeOnSelect : false,          // keep the dropdown open after selecting a suggestion
            highlightFirst: true
        }
    });

Will render

<div class="tagify__dropdown tagify__dropdown--text" style="left:993.5px; top:106.375px; width:616px;">
    <div class="tagify__dropdown__wrapper">
      <div class="tagify__dropdown__item tagify__dropdown__item--active" value="aaab">aaab</div>
      <div class="tagify__dropdown__item" value="aaabb">aaabb</div>
      <div class="tagify__dropdown__item" value="aaabc">aaabc</div>
      <div class="tagify__dropdown__item" value="aaabd">aaabd</div>
      <div class="tagify__dropdown__item" value="aaabe">aaabe</div>
    </div>
</div>

By default searching the suggestions is using fuzzy-search (see settings).

If you wish to assign alias to items (in your suggestion list), add the searchBy property to whitelist items you wish to have an alias for.

In the below example, typing a part of a string which is included in the searchBy property, for example land midd" - the suggested item which matches the value "Israel" will be rendered in the suggestions (dropdown) list.

Example for a suggestion item alias

whitelist = [
    ...
    { value:'Israel', code:'IL', searchBy:'holy land, desert, middle east' },
    ...
]

Another handy setting is dropdown.searchKeys which, like the above dropdown.searchBy setting, allows expanding the search of any typed terms to more than the value property of the whitelist items (if items are a Collection).

Example whitelist:

[
  {
    value    : 123456,
    nickname : "foo",
    email    : "foo@mail.com"
  },
  {
    value    : 987654,
    nickname : "bar",
    email    : "bar@mail.com"
  },
  ...more..
]

Modified searchKeys setting to also search in other keys:

{
  dropdown: {
    searchKeys: ["nickname", "email"] //  fuzzy-search matching for those whitelist items' properties
  }
}

Mixed-Content

See demo here

This feature must be toggled using these settings:

{
  //  mixTagsInterpolator: ["{{", "}}"],  // optional: interpolation before & after string
  mode: 'mix',    // <--  Enable mixed-content
  pattern: /@|#/  // <--  Text starting with @ or # (if single, String can be used here instead of Regex)
}

When mixing text with tags, the original textarea (or input) element will have a value as follows:

[[cartman]]⁠ and [[kyle]]⁠ do not know [[Homer simpson]]⁠

If the initial value of the textarea or input is formatted as the above example, Tagify will try to automatically convert everything between [[ & ]] to a tag, if tag exists in the whitelist, so make sure when the Tagify instance is initialized, that it has tags with the correct value property that match the same values that appear between [[ & ]].

Applying the setting dropdown.position:"text" is encouraged for mixed-content tags, because the suggestions list weird when there is already a lot of content on multiple lines.

If a tag does not exist in the whitelist, it may be created by the user and all you should do is listen to the add event and update your local/remote state.

Single-Value

Similar to native <Select> element, but allows typing text as value.

React

See live demo for React integration examples. ⚠️ Tagify is not a controlled component.

A none-minified and raw source-code Tagify React component is exported from react.tagify.jsx and you can import it as seen in the below code example. This React port will only work if your bundler can handle raw source-code in ES2015+ which is better for tree-shaking.

Update regarding onChange prop:

I have changed how the onChange works internally within the Wrapper of Tagify so as of March 30, 2021 the e argument will include a detail parameter with the value as string. There is no more e.target, and to access the original DOM input element, do this: e.detail.tagify.DOM.originalInput.

Note: You will need to import Tagify's CSS also, either by JavaScript or by SCSS @import (which is preferable) Also note that you will need to use dart-sass and not node-sass in order to compile the file.

import { useCallback, useRef } from 'react'
import Tags from '@yaireo/tagify/react' // React-wrapper file
import '@yaireo/tagify/dist/tagify.css' // Tagify CSS

const App = () => {
    // on tag add/edit/remove
    const onChange = useCallback((e) => {
        console.log("CHANGED:"
            , e.detail.tagify.value // Array where each tag includes tagify's (needed) extra properties
            , e.detail.tagify.getCleanValue() // Same as above, without the extra properties
            , e.detail.value // a string representing the tags
        )
    }, [])

    return (
        <Tags
            whitelist={['item 1', 'another item', 'item 3']}
            placeholder='Add some tags'
            settings={{
                blacklist: ["xxx"],
                maxTags: 4,
                dropdown: {
                    enabled: 0 // always show suggestions dropdown
                }
            }}
            defaultValue="a,b,c" // initial value
            onChange={onChange}
        />
    )
}

To gain full access to Tagify's (instance) inner methods, A custom ref can be used:

import Tags, {MixedTags} from "@yaireo/tagify/react";

...
const tagifyRef = useRef()
...
<Tags tagifyRef={tagifyRef} ... />

// or mix-mode
<MixedTags
  settings={...}
  onChange={...}
  defaultValue={`This is a textarea which mixes text with [[{"value":"tags"}]].`}
/>

<MixedTags> component is a shorthand for <Tags InputMode="textarea">

Updating the component's state

The settings prop is only used once in the initialization process, please do not update it afterwards.

Vue

I don't know Vue at all and this thin wrapper was built by a friend who knows. To import the wrapper file, use the import path @yaireo/tagify/vue

jQuery version

This variant of Tagify code has been deprecated because it doesn't really add much in terms of ease-of-use. I only made it so it would be possible to use jQuery selectors & chaining but the (jQuery) port really isn't needed when implementing Tagify within a jQuery code.

Below is the documentation for previous Tagify packages versions which included support:

jQuery.tagify.js

A jQuery wrapper version is also available, but I advise not using it because it's basically the exact same as the "normal" script (non-jqueryfied) and all the jQuery's wrapper does is allowing to chain the event listeners for ('add', 'remove', 'invalid')

$('[name=tags]')
    .tagify()
    .on('add', function(e, tagData){
        console.log('added', ...tagData)  // data, index, and DOM node
    });

Accessing methods can be done via the .data('tagify'):

$('[name=tags]').tagify();
// get tags from the server (ajax) and add them:
$('[name=tags]').data('tagify').addTags('aaa, bbb, ccc')

HTML input & textarea attributes

The below list of attributes affect Tagify.
These can also be set by Tagify settings Object manually, and not declerativly (via attributes).

<input pattern='^[A-Za-z_✲ ]{1,15}$'>

<input placeholder='please type your tags'>

<input readOnly>

<input autofocus>

<input required>

Caveats

• <input> wrapped in a <label> doesn't work - #1219 and so Tagify internally sets the label's for attribute to an empty string, so clicking the Tagify component will not blur it and re-focus on the hidden input/textarea element Tagify is "connected" to

FAQ

List of questions & scenarios which might come up during development with Tagify:

const tagify = new Tagify(tagNode, {
  whitelist: ["a", "b", "c"]
})

tagify.settings.whitelist = ["foo", "bar"]

// set the whitelist directly on the instance and not on the "settings" property
tagify.whitelist = ["foo", "bar"]

[{ "id":1, "name":"foo bar" }]

[{ "id":1, "value": 1, "name":"foo bar" }]

[{ "value":1, "name":"foo bar" }]

[{ "value":"foo bar" }]

// ad a simple array of Strings
["foo bar"]

var tagify = new Tagify(...)

// listen to "change" events on the "original" input/textarea element
tagify.DOM.originalInput.addEventListener('change', onTagsChange)

// This example uses async/await but you can use Promises, of course, if you prefer.
async function onTagsChange(e){
  const {name, value} = e.target
  // "imaginary" async function "saveToServer" should get the field's name & value
  await saveToServer(name, value)
}

flex-wrap: nowrap;

var tagify = new Tagify(...)
var formElm = document.forms[0]; // just an example

tagify.on('keydown', onTagifyKeyDown)

function onTagifyKeyDown(e){
  if( e.key == 'Enter' &&         // "enter" key pressed
      !tagify.state.inputText &&  // assuming user is not in the middle or adding a tag
      !tagify.state.editing       // user not editing a tag
    ){
    setTimeout(() => formElm.submit())  // put some buffer to make sure tagify has done with whatever, to be on the safe-side
  }

}

• Double-click tag fires both "edit" & "click" custom events
• Manualy open the suggestions dropdown
• Render your own suggestions dropdown
• Allow max length on mix mode
• Always show dropdown
• Limit the length of a tag value (minimum & maximum)
• Mixed mode initial value
• Random colors for each tag
• Format input value for server side
• Writing to tagify textarea
• Scroll all tags within one line, instead of growing vertically
• Insert emoji at caret location when editing a tag
• propagate change event
• Manually update tag data after it was added
• Ajax Whitelist with "enforceWhitelist" setting enabled
• Custom (multiple) tag validation & AJAX
• Make tags from pasted multi-line text
• Add a tag at caret position in mixed mode
• Change automatic title tooltips for invalid tags
• Create a submenu for the suggestions dropdown
• Hide placeholder if tags exist

CSS Variables

Learn more about CSS Variables) (custom properties)

Tagify's utilizes CSS variables which allow easy customization without the need to manually write CSS. If you do wish to heavily style your Tagify components, then you can (and should) use the below variables within your modified styles as much as you can.

For a live example, see the demos page.

Suggestions Dropdown CSS variables

should be appiled on the :root {...} selector

Full list of Tagify's SCSS variables

Methods

Tagify is prototype based and There are many methods, but I've chosen to list the most relevant ones:

Events

To listen to tagify events use the .on(EVENT_NAME, EVENT_CALLBACK_REFERENCE) method and stop listening use the .off(EVENT_NAME, EVENT_CALLBACK_REFERENCE)

All triggered events return the instance's scope (tagify).
See e.detail for custom-event additional data.

var tagify = new Tagify(...)

// events can be chainable, and multiple events may be binded for the same callback
tagify
  .on('input', onInput)
  .on('edit:input edit:updated edit:start edit:keydown', e => console.log(e.type, e.detail))

function onInput(e) {
  console.log(e.detail)
}

// later in the code you might do to unsubscribe the event listener with a specific callback
tagify.off('input', onInput)

var tagify = new Tagify(inputNode, {
  callbacks: {
    "change": (e) => console.log(e.detail),
    "dropdown:show": (e) => console.log(e.detail)
  }
})

Hooks

Promise-based hooks for async program flow scenarios.

Allows to "hook" (intervene) at certain points of the program, which were selected as a suitable place to pause the program flow and wait for further instructions on how/if to proceed.

var input = document.querySelector('input')
var tagify = new Tagify(input,{
    hooks: {
        /**
         * Removes a tag
         * @param  {Array}  tags [Array of Objects [{node:..., data:...}, {...}, ...]]
         */
        beforeRemoveTag : function( tags ){
            return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
                confirm("Remove " + tags[0].data.value + "?")
                    ? resolve()
                    : reject()
            })
        }
    }
})

Settings