Angular JS - Automatically focus input and show typeahead dropdown - ui.bootstrap.typeahead

Question

I am using Angular JS - ui.bootstrap.typeahead:

I would like to click a button and focus an input field and automatically show the typeahead suggestion dropdown. I h

Answer 1

you can achieve by this code

 $scope.change = function() {
        var e = document.getElementById("test");
        var $e = angular.element(e);
        $e.triggerHandler('focus');
        $e.triggerHandler('input');
    }

change the test to your type-head ID

Answer 2

Now, as I don't have enough reputation to comment, I must write a new answer to warn people about runTarm's answer above. This is a viable solution, but it runs the risk of running into the following error:

Error: [$rootScope:inprog] $apply already in progress

This seems to be due to ng-focus being a synchronized event (see discussion here). Instead, one can use the ng-click-attribute, and this error doesn't occur.

Also, I've verified that

$element.triggerHandler('input');

works just as good as the jQuery-trigger in runTarm's answer.

Answer 3

I got solved this issue through a directive. When you uses this directive, shows the list without some filter then, you type your search to find an element.

angular.module('myapp')
.directive('typeaheadLikeSelect', 
['$parse',function($parse) {
    return {
        require: 'ngModel',
        link: function (scope, element, attr, ngModel){

            var aux_modelValue, aux_viewValue,
                modelGetter = $parse(attr.ngModel),
                modelSetter = modelGetter.assign;

            var noViewValue = function(){
              return
              ngModel.$$lastCommittedViewValue === undefined ||
              !ngModel.$$lastCommittedViewValue.trim();
            };

            var forceEvent = function(){
              ngModel.$setViewValue();
              ngModel.$viewValue = ' ';
              ngModel.$setViewValue(' ');
              ngModel.$render();
              scope.$apply();
              element.val(element.val().trim());
            };

            element.on('mousedown', function(e){
              e.stopPropagation();
              forceEvent();
            });

            element.on('blur', function(e){
              e.stopPropagation();
              if(aux_modelValue){
                modelSetter(scope, aux_modelValue);
                scope.$apply();
              }
            });

            scope.$watch(function () {
              return ngModel.$modelValue;
            }, function(newValue, oldValue){
              if(newValue || (!newValue && !oldValue))
                aux_modelValue = newValue;
            });

        }
    };
}]);

I leave a view code, to testing the above code.

<script type="text/ng-template" id="customTemplate.html">
      <a>
          <span ng-bind-html="match.label.description | uibTypeaheadHighlight:query"></span>
      </a>
</script>
    <div class="form-group has-feedback" ng-class="{'has-success':items.mymodel}">
            <input
                placeholder="typeahead"
                ng-model="items.mymodel"
                uib-typeahead="responses as responses for responses in getResponses($viewValue)"
                typeahead-template-url="customTemplate.html"
                typeahead-input-formatter="$model.description"
                typeahead-loading="loadingResponses"
                typeahead-no-results="noResponses"
                typeahead-editable="false"
                typeahead-on-select="changeItem($item)"
                class="form-control"
              required="required"
              typeahead-like-select>
              <div ng-show="noResponses">
                <i class="glyphicon glyphicon-remove"></i> No Results Found
              </div>

              <span ng-show="!items.mymodel" class="glyphicon glyphicon-search form-control-feedback" aria-hidden="true"></span>
              <span ng-show="items.mymodel" class="glyphicon glyphicon-ok form-control-feedback" aria-hidden="true"></span>
          </div>

Answer 4

Seems like built-in support for this feature is coming in an upcoming release in the form of typeahead-min-length attribute supporting value of 0.

It is implemented in this commit in the master branch https://github.com/angular-ui/bootstrap/commit/d859f42cc022a5d8779f1c7b358486bbdd04ed57, but there is no release with this yet and it's not in the 0.14.x branch.

Hopefully a new release will come quickly so that there is no need for these workarounds anymore.

Answer 5

Updated:

I added the directive to github for easy updates and access. You can now install it as a dependency through bower.

Original post:

I came up with a pretty clean hack that does not require any changes to ui-bootstrap-tpls. The Idea is to use $setViewValue() to trigger the popup with a combination of a special filter comparator function.

In order to bypass the minLength check, $setViewValue() has to be set to a value longer than 1 so i'm using one space string. The role of the comparator function is to treat one space as a match to all items so they'll all show up when clicking on an empty input.

I created a simple directive:

angular.module('app')
.directive('typeaheadFocus', function () {
  return {
    require: 'ngModel',
    link: function (scope, element, attr, ngModel) {

      //trigger the popup on 'click' because 'focus'
      //is also triggered after the item selection
      element.bind('click', function () {

        var viewValue = ngModel.$viewValue;

        //restore to null value so that the typeahead can detect a change
        if (ngModel.$viewValue == ' ') {
          ngModel.$setViewValue(null);
        }

        //force trigger the popup
        ngModel.$setViewValue(' ');

        //set the actual value in case there was already a value in the input
        ngModel.$setViewValue(viewValue || ' ');
      });

      //compare function that treats the empty space as a match
      scope.emptyOrMatch = function (actual, expected) {
        if (expected == ' ') {
          return true;
        }
        return actual.indexOf(expected) > -1;
      };
    }
  };
});

Usage:

<input type="text" ng-model="selected" typeahead="item for item in items | filter:$viewValue:emptyOrMatch | limitTo:8" typeahead-focus >