🔽 Master Combo Box

The Master Combo Box is the pack's answer to a boring, universal problem: you have a set of named choices you keep picking from - aspect ratios, styles, strengths, model names - and you're tired of either retyping them or burying them in a script. This node gives you a two-level dropdown that reads its choices from JSON files on disk. Pick a category in the first menu, pick a value in the second, and the selection comes out as a clean string.

The pack ships with a pile of example categories so you can see the pattern immediately: styles, ratios, megapixel, divisible_by, number_0-100, number_1-10, Ollama_model, Alpha-Color, color_grading, and more. Each one is a separate .json file in the pack's dropdowns/ folder, and each file is just an array of strings.

How it works

The node reads its options through a server route (/orion4d/get_dropdowns) that scans the dropdowns/ folder. Each .json file becomes a category; the file's contents become that category's options. On the Python side, category is a real combo widget populated at startup, value is a string widget driven by a custom dropdown in the UI, and a VALIDATE_INPUTS check makes sure the selected value actually exists in the selected category - so a stale selection errors out instead of silently passing garbage.

There's also a Refresh button that reloads the JSON files without restarting ComfyUI. That's the workflow this node is built for: edit a JSON file, hit refresh, and your new options are live.

Inputs and outputs

• Inputs:
  • category (enum) - which JSON file to read.
  • value (STRING) - which entry within that category.
• Output: selected_text (STRING) - the chosen value.

That's the whole interface. No port math, no hidden modes.

Adding your own choices

Make a file in dropdowns/ - say moods.json:

["dark", "golden hour", "neon", "pastel"]

Restart (or hit Refresh) and moods appears as a category with those four options. You can now wire selected_text into a prompt assembler, a resolution node, or anywhere a string parameter lives. The value validation means the dropdown always shows real, existing choices - which is the quiet killer feature for keeping shared workflows sane.

Troubleshooting

• "Value not found" errors after editing a JSON file: the node remembers its last selection, and if you removed that entry, validation rightly refuses it. Just pick a valid value from the refreshed dropdown.
• Category list is empty on first load? The dropdowns/ folder gets created automatically if missing; drop a JSON array in and refresh.
• This is a string node, not a magic parameter setter. It outputs selected_text; whatever consumes it still has to be able to parse that string. Keep your option values in the exact format the downstream node expects.

Installing it

It's part of Orion4D_MetaNode, so one install gets you all of this:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/orion4d/Orion4D_MetaNode

Or use ComfyUI Manager (search "Orion4D_MetaNode") and restart. It appears under Orion4D_MetaNode → UI Widgets. No extra dependencies, no models. Honest context: this is a young, single-developer pack with a modest footprint, so the Master Combo is a personal-utility sort of node - but the "dropdown driven by plain JSON files" pattern is genuinely handy and easy to extend.