Collection list

Collection lists are one of the two ways to add and design dynamic content from a Collection.

This video features an old UI. Updated version coming soon!

Collection lists are one of the two main ways we can design and develop with content from a collection. Here's a sample collection we created for a group of team members. From any page in our project, we can access the Collection List right from the Elements panel, and drag it right onto the Canvas.

We want to quickly cover three aspects of a collection list: the basic layout, binding to a collection (this is super powerful), and collection list settings.

Let's do basic layout.

We're dragging the collection list and dropping it right on the Canvas. So we have a bunch of empty purple boxes. And though we're just getting started, we can choose our collection from the dropdown, and we can play around with layout options.

Regardless of the layout we choose, if we go to Preview, we'll see the current design: literally nothing's there. Let's go back out of Preview. There's nothing there because we haven't referenced any of our content.

Since our collection list gives us access to anything from a collection, we can drop an element right into any collection item in our collection list. Let's make this heading an H3, but it could be any text element.

And we can bind that element right to a specific field from our collection. This is just getting the name from our team members. And that's it. We're looking at the content — we have an H3 for each of our items in the collection list.

Let's keep going. We can drag in an image element. And when we're dropping these elements in, they're static. They're static until we bind them to something from a collection. And when we do? Each item in our collection list is referencing the relevant field.

All we're doing is dragging in normal elements (static elements) and binding them to specific fields in our collection.

We can, of course, add styles to any of these. And as we're adjusting here, we can see that changes in a collection list are done in lockstep. That is: changing anything in one collection item affects the others. That's by design. If we drag in a div block to wrap and style the content in each item? Those changes are happening in all our collection items.

There's still a major advantage to using classes — that is: while everything's done in lockstep in this collection list, we might want other collection lists on other pages throughout our project. Of course, classes will empower us make style changes project-wide.

And we're accelerating here (quite a bit) so you don't have to sit through each and every frame, but the idea here is that you can bind dynamic content to static elements in a collection list.

That's binding. Let's look at our settings.

We can select our Collection List Wrapper element (or our Collection List element) and adjust our layout at any time.

Our collection list settings also let us add filters. Filters empower us to show only the collection items we want — collection items that match one or more criteria.

We can also choose all sorts of options related to sort order — how we want the collection items to be sorted. Maybe based on when the collection item was updated: newest to oldest.

If we go back into the CMS and into our collection? And we go inside one of our items to make a change? Of course, we know that'll affect how recently this item has been updated.

Which means back in our collection list, we'll see that Dale is displayed first. We're sorting based on when the collection list was updated. Newest to oldest.

We can also put limits on the number of collection items displayed. This will only display the number of items specified here.

So. Collection lists. We can drop them in anywhere. They give us access to anything from a collection. We can choose our layout, we can bind collection content to elements inside the list, and we can, of course, configure our settings to tell the collection list how to sort and display the items in our design.

Collection lists are one of two ways to add and design dynamic content from a CMS Collection or an Ecommerce Collection. You can add Collection lists to any type of page. The other way to add dynamic content is with Collection pages.

Prerequisites

In this lesson

Add a Collection list
Connect a Collection list to a Collection
Design a Collection list
Understand the anatomy of a collection list
Configure collection list settings

Add a Collection list

As long as you have one or more Collections with items, you can add a Collection list to any static page or Collection page in your project. You can simply drag a Collection list from the Add panel or add one from the Quick find (CMD/CTRL+E).

Connect to a Collection

A collection list is useless unless it’s connected to a Collection. Double-click the Collection list to open the collection list settings and choose the Collection you want from the dropdown.

A source dropdown menu for the Collection item selected. There are 6 CMS collections and none as sources.

Design a Collection list

Once the Collection is chosen, the Collection list will display all the items in that Collection as empty blocks. You’ll be able to add elements to the list and, once you connect it to a Collection field, automatically get correct data for each Collection item.

A collection list of 6 blog post collection items. There are 2 columns of 3 rows each.

Add static and dynamic elements

When you drop an element into one of the empty collection item blocks, that item will repeat for all the items in that collection. That’s called “static” content, or content that doesn't come from a collection.

6 H3 headings are inputed in 2 columns and 3 rows each.

Now, when you connect that element to a Collection field, then it will automatically replace the content in the element with the content from each Collection item. It becomes “dynamic” content because the content is sourced from the CMS.

Connect elements to Collection fields

You can connect a static element to a Collection field and dynamically update the content of that element. Static elements have blue outlines while dynamic elements, or elements that have data coming from the CMS, have purple outlines on the canvas. To connect an element to a Collection field:

Select the element in the Collection list
Open the Element settings
Check the box labeled “Get <data type=""> from <collection></collection></data>”
Open the dropdown and choose the collection field you want to get content from

A name field is selected as the source for a heading. The H3 headings will collect information from the Team members collection list.

Learn more: How to connect each Collection field type to the relevant elements

Style dynamic elements

Just like how adding static elements into a collection list will repeat those items, adding styling to any element (static or dynamic) will apply that styling across all the Collection items in that list. For example, if we connect a heading to a field and then style that heading to have a green text color, all the items in that list will have different content, but the same green style.

You can apply dynamic style settings by pulling colors and background images from color and image fields.

2 columns and 3 rows of team member cards with their name, occupation and description.

Understand the anatomy of a Collection list

The navigator shows the layers inside of a collection list.

Collection list wrapper

By default, a Collection list wrapper contains the following components: the Collection list and the Empty state. If pagination is enabled, it also contains the Pagination wrapper. You can add multiple Pagination wrappers by duplicating the wrapper.

Collection list

The Collection list component contains the Collection items of the list. You cannot add other elements to this component.

Collection item

The Collection item component contains the actual content that you add to the Collection list. Any item dropped here will populate all items in the list. These elements are static until they are connected to Collection fields or have conditional visibility applied to them. This will convert them to dynamic elements. In the Navigator, dynamic elements are indicated with a purple icon.

Empty state

The empty state replaces the Collection list when there are no items to display for the list. By default, it has a gray background and contains a text block. You can change the styling and replace or add more elements to create a custom empty state.

Pagination

The pagination component contains two Link blocks: the previous button and the next button. Each of these can be styled and customized, however, you cannot add other elements to this wrapper.

Learn more: Paginating collection lists

Configure Collection list settings

The Collection list has its own settings to control the content that gets displayed. You can also change the layout of a list in many ways. You can access the settings by selecting the Collection list wrapper or Collection list element and pressing enter or pressing D to open the Element settings panel.

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Collection

Here, you can choose which Collection you want to connect to your Collection list. You can change the Collection connected to a Collection list only when none of the elements inside of the list are connected to the currently connected Collection’s fields.

UI State

This setting allows you to toggle between the Items view and the Empty state view so you can edit that state of the collection list.

This setting doesn’t set the state of a Collection list on a live site. The actual state of a Collection list is determined by its items. The empty state only shows when there are no items in a Collection or when they are filtered out.

Layout

You can keep the list stacked vertically or you can change the layout to columns, similar to the columns element.

You can also apply grid to the Collection list to create a dynamic grid. In that case, make sure to leave the layout setting in the Collection list settings set to "list".

Pro tip
It’s recommended to use flexbox to build equal height layouts for Collection lists. Content in each Collection item can vary and cause non-flexbox-based column layouts to misalign.

Filters

Adding a filter allows you to show only the Collection items you want — the Collection items that match one or more criteria that is dictated from the settings.

Learn more: Filtering Collection lists

Sort order

Sort order lets you sort Collection lists based on a specific field(s).

Learn more: Sorting Collection lists

Paginate items

You can paginate Collection lists to display a specific number of items/page.

Learn more: Paginating Collection lists

Limit items

This option lets you define how many items to show in a collection list and which item to start listing from. For example, you can have your list start at item 5 and show only 3 items. That will show item 5, 6, and 7.

Learn more: Limiting Collection items

Need to know
The max limits are 100 items per Collection list and 20 lists per page unless pagination is enabled. Learn how to use pagination to display more than 100 items in a Collection list.

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