How do I pass an extra parameter to Jquery Autocomplete field?

Question

I\'m using the JQuery Autocomplete in one of my forms.

The basic form selects products from my database. This works great, but I\'d like to further develop so that o

Answer 1

I believe you are correct in thinking your call to $("#product").autocomplete is firing on page load. Perhaps you can assign an onchange() handler to the select menu:

$("#zipcode").change(resetAutocomplete);

and have it invalidate the #product autocomplete() call and create a new one.

function resetAutocomplete() {
    $("#product").autocomplete("destroy");
    $("#product").autocomplete({
         source:"product_auto_complete.php?postcode=" + $('#zipcode').val(),
         minLength: 2,
         select: function(event, ui){... }
    });
}

You may want your resetAutocomplete() call to be a little smarter -- like checking if the zip code actually differs from the last value -- to save a few server calls.