jquery-ui autocomplete using multiple field values - jquery-ui

Question

I have a bunch of fields (first name, last name, etc) and I want to be able to pass the values of any that are filled or partially filled to the autocomplete server side so I can use them in the query.

Answer 1

I did this by updating the autocomplete "source" on any change of focus on the various fields, or on the autocomplete "select" event.
jQuery('#people_new_user input[type="text"]').each(
function(index, element) {
var field = element.name;
jQuery(element)
.focus(setSourceUser)
.autocomplete({
source: "/cf/AutoComplete/People?current="+field,
select: selectUser
});
});
The code above sets up a "focus" event handler called "setSourceUser" and a handler for the autocomplete "select" event called "selectUser".
function setSourceUser(event)
{
var endPart = "";
jQuery('#people_new_user input[type="text"]').each(
function(index, ielement) {
var ifield = ielement.name;
var ival = ielement.value;
if (ival != '')
{
endPart += '&field=' + ifield;
endPart += '&value=' + ival;
}
}).each(
function(index, element) {
var field = element.name;
jQuery(element)
.autocomplete("option", "source",
"/cf/AutoComplete/People?current="+field+endPart);
});
}
The above "setSourceUser" function gets all the values from all the fields (in the first "each" function) and builds a "endPart" for the source, and then sets up the autocomplete "source" option for each field. I'm not going to show the "select" callback because it does other stuff that's not relevant to this issue, and then calls "setSourceUser". The source ends up being something like /cf/AutoComplete/People?current=last_name&field=first_name&value=p&field=last_name&value=tomblin as well as the "term" value that autocomplete itself supplies.
On the server side, my function (written in Mason and Perl in this case) uses the &field=foo&value=bar pairs (skipping the ones where field == current, because autocomplete passes in the more current value in term) in "LIKE" sql statements. Then I return the found results in JSON. (If there are more than 50 results, I don't bother because the list would be too long.)
% $r->content_type('application/json');
<% JSON::to_json( \#suggestions, { utf8 => 1, allow_blessed => 1,
convert_blessed => 1, } ) |n %>
% $m->abort;
<%ARGS>
#field => undef
#value => undef
$current => undef
$term => undef
</%ARGS>
<%INIT>
use RTx::SearchBuilder::Records::Peoples;
$current =~ s/people_//g;
my $people = RTx::SearchBuilder::Records::Peoples->new(Handle => CFHandle());
my $fn = scalar(#field);
for my $i (0...$fn-1)
{
my $f = $field[$i];
next if !defined($f);
my $v = $value[$i];
if ($f ne $current)
{
$people->Limit(
FIELD => $f,
OPERATOR => 'LIKE',
VALUE => '%'.$v.'%',
ENTRYAGGREGATOR => 'AND');
}
}
$people->Limit(
FIELD => $current,
OPERATOR => 'LIKE',
VALUE => '%'.$term.'%',
ENTRYAGGREGATOR => 'AND');
my #suggestions;
# If there are too many results, skip it and make them narrow it down a bit
# more
if ($people->Count < 50)
{
while (my $person = $people->Next)
{
my $suggestion = { label => $person->$current, value => $person };
push #suggestions, $suggestion;
}
}
</%INIT>