jquery autocomplete json and clickable link through

Question

I've been at this for a while and I'm making very slow progress mostly because my jquery skills need improvement, I am trying though :)

I have this code:

jQuery(function() {
  jQuery("input#search").autocomplete({
    minLength: 2,
    source: function(request, response) { 
      jQuery.post("index.php?option=com_eat&view=search&format=raw", { 
        "'.$token.'": "1",
        search_string: request.term
      }, function(data) { 
        response( jQuery.map( data, function( item ) {
          return {
            value: item.name,
            url: item.url
          }
        }));
      }, "json"); 
    }
  });
});

The return from the post is json in the form:

data.url = some_url;
data.name = some_name;

I want to have the autocomplete populated by the json data.name and if any of these are clicked it directs the page to data.url.

The real issue for me is getting the JSON data from the response into the autocomplete results. There aren't too many examples of this on the web that suit my circumstances, well none that I can find.

Thanks for any help.

Answer 1

I managed to solve my problem, see below (NOTE: $token is a php variable). This allows me to send (specifically post) more than 1 variable to the php script that returns the JSON response. In my case this is necessary as I use a token to prevent unauthorised access to the search functionality.

jQuery(function() {
  jQuery("#search").autocomplete({
    source: function(request, response) {
      jQuery.ajax({
        url: "index.php?option=com_eat&view=search&format=raw",
        type: "post",
        dataType: "json",
        data: {
          search_string: request.term,            
          "'.$token.'": "1"
        },
        success: function(data) {
          response(jQuery.map(data, function(item) {
            return {
                url: item.url,
                value: item.name
            }
          }))
        }
      })
    },
    select: function( event, ui ) {
      window.location.href = ui.item.url;
    },
    minLength: 2
  });
});

The returned JSON from index.php?option=com_eat&view=search&format=raw looks like:

[{"url":"url1", "name":"name1"}, {"url":"url2", "name":"name2"}, ...]

The HTML on the page looks like so:

<input type="text" size="30" id="search" />

Answer 2

The real issue for me is getting the JSON data from the response into the autocomplete results

Just looking at your code, it looks like the autocomplete should be populating correctly. Are you sure the data is coming back? If you keep having problems, try using a local data source and see if the problems persist.

if any of these are clicked it directs the page to data.url.

You can accomplish this by defining an event handler for the select event:

$("input").autocomplete({
    /* Snip */
    select: function(event, ui) {
        window.location = ui.item.url;
    }
});

ui.item refers to the item that was selected in the dropdown.

Here's an example of this working (with a local data source): http://jsfiddle.net/andrewwhitaker/KBpXh/