jquery ui autocomplete combobox with categories

Question

I\'m using the jquery ui autocomplete combobox, and it\'s working great but now i\'m getting a bit greedy. I would like to be able to add categories to it. The combobox is

Answer 1

as you can see in the jQueryUI docs, you have to customize the widget to do that

_renderMenu: function( ul, items ) {
            var self = this,
                currentCategory = "";
            $.each( items, function( index, item ) {
                if ( item.category != currentCategory ) {
                    ul.append( "
" + item.category + "
" );
                    currentCategory = item.category;
                }
                self._renderItem( ul, item );
            });
        }

this its not tested, but should be a good start:

_renderMenu: function( ul, items ) {
            var self = this,
                currentCategory = "";
            $.each( items, function( index, item ) {
                if ( item.parent.attr('label') != currentCategory ) {
                    ul.append( "
" + item.parent.attr('label') + "
" );
                    currentCategory = item.parent.attr('label');
                }
                self._renderItem( ul, item );
            });
        }

if this doesnt work, maybe you should debug to see whats into the items array that comes as a parameter of _renderMenu.

a side note: this is called MonkeyPatching, i wouldnt recommend doing this a lot, but since the docs show it, id say do it.