[validation] How do you do dynamic / dependent drop downs in Google Sheets?

Edit: The answer below may be satisfactory, but it has some drawbacks:

1. There is a noticeable pause for the running of the script. I'm on a 160 ms latency, and it's enough to be annoying.

2. It works by building a new range each time you edit a given row. This gives an 'invalid contents' to previous entries some of the time

I hope others can clean this up somewhat.

Here's another way to do it, that saves you a ton of range naming:

Three sheets in the worksheet: call them Main, List, and DRange (for dynamic range.) On the Main sheet, column 1 contains a timestamp. This time stamp is modified onEdit.

On List your categories and subcategories are arranged as a simple list. I'm using this for plant inventory at my tree farm, so my list looks like this:

Group   | Genus | Bot_Name
Conifer | Abies | Abies balsamea
Conifer | Abies | Abies concolor
Conifer | Abies | Abies lasiocarpa var bifolia
Conifer | Pinus | Pinus ponderosa
Conifer | Pinus | Pinus sylvestris
Conifer | Pinus | Pinus banksiana
Conifer | Pinus | Pinus cembra
Conifer | Picea | Picea pungens
Conifer | Picea | Picea glauca
Deciduous | Acer | Acer ginnala
Deciduous | Acer | Acer negundo
Deciduous | Salix | Salix discolor
Deciduous | Salix | Salix fragilis
...

Where | indicates separation into columns.
For convenience I also used the headers as names for named ranges.

DRrange A1 has the formula

=Max(Main!A2:A1000)

This returns the most recent timestamp.

A2 to A4 have variations on:

=vlookup($A$1,Inventory!$A$1:$E$1000,2,False) 

with the 2 being incremented for each cell to the right.

On running A2 to A4 will have the currently selected Group, Genus and Species.

Below each of these, is a filter command something like this:

=unique(filter(Bot_Name,REGEXMATCH(Bot_Name,C1)))

These filters will populate a block below with matching entries to the contents of the top cell.

The filters can be modified to suit your needs, and to the format of your list.

Back to Main: Data validation in Main is done using ranges from DRange.

The script I use:

function onEdit(event) {

  //SETTINGS
  var dynamicSheet='DRange'; //sheet where the dynamic range lives
  var tsheet = 'Main'; //the sheet you are monitoring for edits
  var lcol = 2; //left-most column number you are monitoring; A=1, B=2 etc
  var rcol = 5; //right-most column number you are monitoring
  var tcol = 1; //column number in which you wish to populate the timestamp
  //

  var s = event.source.getActiveSheet();
  var sname = s.getName();
  if (sname == tsheet) {
    var r = event.source.getActiveRange();
    var scol = r.getColumn();  //scol is the column number of the edited cell
    if (scol >= lcol && scol <= rcol) {
      s.getRange(r.getRow(), tcol).setValue(new Date());
      for(var looper=scol+1; looper<=rcol; looper++) {
         s.getRange(r.getRow(),looper).setValue(""); //After edit clear the entries to the right
      }
    }
  }
}

Original Youtube presentation that gave me most of the onEdit timestamp component: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDK8rjdE85Y