Best way to implement a chained category selection

Question

Im in the process of making a website where user must select a category between +400 categories and/or subcategories.

The forms needs Parent category and x child categories. What is the best way of implementing this? I have seen people using this example but are there any other options which can be faster and easier? Any tips or help from you UX people is really appreciated.

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This is a sample category dataset:

categories = 
{
Vehicles  {cars { Audi{ A4{ Quattor, RS, S}, A5{...}, A6}, 
                  BMW{...}, 
                  Volvo{...}
                },
          Bikes{...}, 
          Bicycle{...}, 
          Trucks{...}, ...
          },
Beauty    {Face{a{z{...},...}},...},
Sports    {Fishing{....}, Biking, Swimming, ...},
...       {...}
}

This questions is answered but please feel free to write if you have a better method in mind. Thank you. You can still get the up votes or answer.

Answer 1

In case you don't want to go with classic cascading drop-down selections

Just give the last drop-down as an auto-suggest, since any selection for last drop-down would mean that previous three are already selected by default. And show the chaining in the options when the user type in the last text box, for example when user types 'Qu' in the textbox, show the options as

Quattro -> A4 -> Audi -> Cars