Rails: How do I autocomplete search for Name but save ID?

Question

I\'ve used this video http://railscasts.com/episodes/102-auto-complete-association-revised to set up an autocomplete search input in a form for my app. (The video may be for mem

Answer 1

In addition to doing as @LukasSvoboda suggested, you can also override the select event callback, which gets triggered when you select an item from the dropdown. In the callback, you can set the text field (which doesn't need to be submitted) to the "label" of the selected item and set the value of a hidden field of the game id (which does need to be submitted) to the "value" of the selected item.

In coffee:

jQuery ->
  $('#play_game_name').autocomplete
    source: $('#play_game_name').data('autocomplete-source')
    select: (event, ui) ->

    # necessary to prevent autocomplete from filling in 
    # with the value instead of the label
    event.preventDefault()

    $(this).val ui.item.label
    $('#game_id').val ui.item.value

In markup:

<%= text_field_tag nil, nil, :id => 'play_game_name', :class => "mlm mtm", data: {autocomplete_source: Game.order(:name).map { |t| { :label => t.name, :value => t.id } } %>
<%= f.hidden_field :game_id, id: 'game_id' %> # tailor to your model