We use both Mongoid and ActiveRecord in our application and I want to use autocomplete on an ActiveRecord model. Unfortunately, the autocomplete plugin defaults to Mongoid if it is detected and there is no way to change this. Hence I get strange errors when making requests to the autocomplete action.

It would be great if there was an option to select the ORM in the model manually, like so:

autocomplete :tag, :name, :orm => :active_record

Hi,

first of all thanks for the gem, it works like a charm, I just have one (hopefully minor) issue.

I have managed to succesfully integrate an autocomplete text field. It works so far and pulls the right data. I want to update a hidden field with the id it pulls from the database and that is exactly where the problem is:

In my form I have the following:

f.autocomplete_field :customer_name, autocomplete_customer_last_name_purchase_orders_path, :id_element => '#purchase_order_customer_id'

purchase_order_customer_id is a normal text field, which should, by my understanding, be updated with the id value of the option I selected in the autocomplete dropdown.

It renders as:
<input data-autocomplete="/purchase_orders/autocomplete_customer_last_name" id="purchase_order_customer_name" id_element="#purchase_order_customer_id" name="purchase_order[customer_name]" size="30" type="text" />
The :id_element attribute gets rendered as normal HTML attribute, therefore the update does not work.

Shouldn't it be rendered as something like data-id-element ="#purchase_order_customer_id' in order to work?

Or am I missing something here? I tried to follow the readme as closely as possible, please bear with me If I'm asking stupid questions, this is my first rails project…

Thanks in Advance

Leo

It took me a while to figure out that rails3-jquery-autocomplete supported namespaces via directly passing the class_name. Perhaps it would save someone else a lot of time to demonstrate an example case with namespaces in the readme itself:

If your model looks like Admin::User, then in the controller call autocomplete like so:
autocomplete :user, :name, :class_name => "admin/user"

I was using the id_element attribute, in order to update a hidden field with the id of the selected item from the autocomplete. Unfortunately, the id_element field was never updated. Looks like the selector for id_element in autocomplete-rails.js is missing the '#'.

When using rails3-jquery-autocomplete in a Rails 3 application deployed to Heroku, the application logs no more show up in the logs displayed by the command "heroku logs".

I could not find the cause of the issue. I've setup a application example here: git://github.com/Florent2/test-logs-heroku.git

Here is how to reproduce the bug:

$ git clone git://github.com/Florent2/test-logs-heroku.git
$ cd test-logs-heroku
$ heroku create
$ git push heroku master
$ heroku open
$ heroku logs --source app

When reaching the homepage, the log message "*** SEE ME ***" should appear in the result of the heroku logs command. But it does not appear.

If one follows the following steps to remove the gem rails3-jquery-autocomplete the logs work again on Heroku:

• edit Gemfile to comment the "gem "rails3-jquery-autocomplete" line

$ EDIT: bundle
$ git ci -am "Remove the rails3-jquery-autocomplete gem"
$ git push heroku master
$ heroku open
$ heroku logs --source app

This time the log message "*** SEE ME ***" appears.

Hello,

I am using Jquery Validation plugin (http://bassistance.de/jquery-plugins/jquery-plugin-validation/).

On pages where this is used, the autocomplete does not work.

Below is the server request transcript:

Without validate plugin:
Started GET "/providers/autocomplete_provider_name?term=a"
Processing by ProvidersController#autocomplete_provider_name as JSON
Parameters: {"term"=>"a"}
Provider Load (0.2ms) SELECT id, name FROM providers WHERE (LOWER(name) LIKE '%a%') ORDER BY name ASC LIMIT 10
Completed 200 OK in 113ms (Views: 8.2ms | ActiveRecord: 0.2ms)

With validate plugin:
Started GET "/providers/autocomplete_provider_name?callback=jQuery15208518586533609778_1304578575617&term=a&=1304578579237"
Processing by ProvidersController#autocomplete_provider_name as JS
Parameters: {"callback"=>"jQuery15208518586533609778_1304578575617", "term"=>"a", ""=>"1304578579237"}
Provider Load (0.1ms) SELECT id, name FROM providers WHERE (LOWER(name) LIKE '%a%') ORDER BY name ASC LIMIT 10
Completed 200 OK in 59ms (Views: 10.3ms | ActiveRecord: 0.1ms)

I had an issue where I wanted my form to update an extra column about a user when the autocomplete field selected a specific user. In the current iteration, only id and the queried column are returned (or potentially the display_value method). I've forked this gem and added the functionality as well as an improvement and a fix. I haven't issued a pull request yet because a) I wanted to discuss them quickly here and make sure I've got the desired syntax and b) I haven't written/updated all of the tests yet because the current test suite is broken.

So, to return extra data to the client, I've added an option :extra_data to the controller's autocomplete method. It accepts an array of attributes and when the response is rendered, they are added into the response JSON. To use this on the client side, I've added an option :update_elements (similar to the current id_element) to the form_helpers. Instead of taking just a selector, this option takes a hash where the keys correspond to an object attribute and the value corresponds to a selector (e.g. for a user object, you could set :extra_data => [:email, :phone] and then use :update_elements => {:email => "#email_form_element", :phone => "#phone_form_element} to update two extra form fields). This can even replace :id_element, though I left it in to maintain backwards compatibility in this area. I can remove it if it is decided that's the best course of action.

I also mentioned submitting what I think is an improvement. Currently, this gem fetches entire objects from the database, even when returning very little information about the objects (only ID and the queried attribute). I've inserted a select clause that will select only the required columns based on the attributes requested. Currently, the id and the queried attribute are the default and anything specified in :extra_data gets added to the select statement. Since we want this function to be as fast as possible, it makes sense not to pull entire rows of data. I'm hoping the syntax for Mongoid is the same as ActiveRecord in terms of adding this select clause. I have no experience with it, but at the moment I just mirrored ActiveRecord's syntax for it.

Lastly, I mentioned what I thought was a bug. The way the form_helpers are written currently changes the behavior of the Rails form_helpers when I think that change is undesirable. text_field and text_field_tag are no longer able to specify the HTML attribute :autocomplete once this gem is installed as :autocomplete is re-written to be data-autocomplete. However, I think there could be instances when that might not be what is intended. Instead, only autocomplete_field and autocomplete_field_tag should be forced to use data-autocomplete as those are specific to this gem.

I'll look into writing tests in the not-to-distant future, but it would help if the current test suite wasn't broken. If you feel like checking out my changes, here they are: https://github.com/jakemack/rails3-jquery-autocomplete

I am getting the following error:

undefined method `account_name' for #Message:0xb5bddb88

I followed the README for my case and have the following:

  = f.autocompleted_input :account_name, :url => autocomplete_account_name_messages_path

And in the messages controller for which this form is using:

1 class MessagesController < ApplicationController
2 before_filter :authenticate_user!
3 autocomplete :account, :name, :full => true

I have gotten autocomplete to work for the create action, however I can't seem to get it to work for the update action. This occurs despite the fact that I render the same form in the view for both actions.

Here is my route file:

resources :posts do
get :autocomplete_tag_name, :on => :collection
end
Here is what my controller looks like:

autocomplete :tag, :name, :full => true, :display_value => :display
def create
@post = current_user.posts.build(params[:post])
@post.tag_list = params[:post][:tag_list].gsub(/(\w)/, '')
if @post.save
redirect_to root_path, :flash => { :success => "Post successful!" }
else
@feed_items = []
render 'pages/home'
end
end

def update
@post = Post.find(params[:id])
@post.tag_list = params[:post][:tag_list].gsub(/(\w)/, '')
if @post.update_attributes(params[:post])
redirect_to @post, :flash => { :success => "Post updated." }
else
@title = "Edit Post"
render 'edit'
end
end
Here is the form rendered for both actions:

<%= form_for @post do |f| %>
<%= render 'shared/error_messages', :object => f.object %>

Title

Input Tags (separate with comma)

And like this for update:

I am at a loss for what is going on here and why it would work with create and the update. My gut is that it has something to do the route. Is this right?

Hello, great gem. Problem is withPostgreSQL LIKE is not case insensative and needs to use iLIKE... is this possible via a setting?

Seems like there should be some performance improvements in limiting the calls to find results when the last returned query is already less than ten and the user is only adding more characters to the input text.

Also when deleting from a string if it would remembers the search where the result was less than 10, it could also not call the db if the current text input contains that said string.

Additionally, is there a way to specify the number of results to be other than 10?

Thanks
Agustin

Hi!

Integration with formtastic would be a great addition. It would be possible to get it in a near release?

Thanks for your attention!

I might be missing something simple, but I can't seem to determine the problem here:

The gem works great with the text fields I've assigned to it, however when I use my EDIT action in my restful controller, the field is not filled in with the current value of the field. In other words, it's not acting like a normal text_field. Any thoughts?

Note: I'm using a single form partial for my NEW and EDIT. I'm also using a virtual attribute getter and setter for this particular field. However, when I revert to a normal text_field helper, it works fine.

Thanks
Nick

I am trying to use this gem along with acts-as-taggable-on, and for the two to work properly I need to change the query from the standard find to something more like Question.tagged_with("%#{params[:term]}%", :any => true).

How can I do this?

Note: I tried going obtrusive to solve the problem by creating an action of my own with the above query entitled autocomplete_question_tags but I get an error because the server cannot find the necessary template.

detection of ORM implementation does not work right for single table inheritance

# Returns a symbol representing what implementation should be used to query
# the database and raises *NotImplementedError* if ORM implementor can not be found
def get_implementation(object) 
  if object.superclass.to_s == 'ActiveRecord::Base'
    :activerecord
  elsif object.included_modules.collect(&:to_s).include?('Mongoid::Document')
    :mongoid
  else
    raise NotImplementedError
  end
end

Examples:
class Contact < ActiveRecord::Base; end
get_implementation return: :activerecord
class Company < Contact; end
get_implementation return: NotImplementedError

Enjoyed testing this plugin.
Would love to use it, but have requirement to deploy on jruby.
Any chance you could remove dependency on yajl, perhaps json_pure?

Hi,
I have 2 model Company and City with this association:
class Company < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :city
end

class City < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :companies
end

I'd like to get the id of the selected city into comany form, I tried in this way:

= f.autocomplete_field :city, autocomplete_city_name_companies_path, "data-id-element" => "#city_id"
#city_id

so I have the div with id="city_id", should not be updated with selected city id?

I would like to use autocomplete as shown in the example, but my model makes me problems. Here it is:

class Task < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :sub_tasks, :class_name => "Task", :foreign_key => "super_task_id"
belongs_to :super_task, :class_name => "Task", :foreign_key => "super_task_id"

class TasksController < ApplicationController
autocomplete :super_task, :title, :full => true, :display_value => :super_task_title

When I use that definition, I get an error that the type SuperTask is now known (NameError (uninitialized constant SuperTask))

When I use instead

autocomplete :task, :title, :full => true, :display_value => :super_task_title

I get the error undefined method `task_title' for #Task:0x26a2c10

So how could I use autocomplete with an object where the relation is named different to the object class name?

Here a short answer (after reading the code):

autocomplete :super_task, :title, :full => true, :class_name => Task

did what I wanted to do. It displays all the tasks as a drop down list when using the form:

autocomplete_field :task, :super_task, autocomplete_super_task_title_tasks_path

Perhaps the answer helps someone.

Is there an easy way to change the limit short of implementing get_autocomplete_items?

It would be really nice to be able to load the data from simple yaml files instead of having to always store and access the data from a full-fledged datastore. I will try to implement this functionality in my own fork.

Hi,

1- I'd like to know if the gem authorize to autocomplete with multiple columns from the same model. I want to do so in order to have a search field where the user can type few letters and that will take a look in every columns of the model.

The documentation is detailed about to autocomplete a field which takes one column of the model. Is it possible to include few colums? If yes, maybe that could be interesting to add it in the documentation.

2- My model contains foreign keys, would it be possible to use the values of the data in the other tables?

I would like to keep it rails and not touch javascript. I saw this feature #15

Is it reliable? And would it match my requirements?

Thx

Is there any reason why scopes is not enabled for mongoid?
the code is straightforward like active record I think.

Why is it not done for Mongoid?

So in here

https://github.com/crowdint/rails3-jquery-autocomplete/blob/1067e4b3dc40952fbb46b70ec0497e5b55b3ce90/lib/rails3-jquery-autocomplete/helpers.rb

You've added a new 3rd param, extra_data

Can you please nil it out so it doesn't give a wrong arg count for old code, just extra_data = nil or something.

Thanks, great gem!

Hello, not sure where tu put this, but here it goes. On the README, on the formtastic section it says that you should just do:

semantic_form_for @product do |f|
f.autocompleted_input :brand_name, :url => autocomplete_brand_name_path
end


However, there is a mistake, the url should look like this:

This form builder example from the Read Me is confusing to me:

 form_for @product do |f|
    f.autocomplete_field :brand_name, autocomplete_brand_name_products_path
 end

When I try to recreate the example, I get undefined method `brand_name'.

The Read Me doesn't show what the product model's associations look like. I would assume that product belongs_to :brand. If that's the case, I still don't see where the :brand_name method is defined for product.

I want to add the tag counts next the auto-completed term, similar to what is done on Stackoverflow. I am a complete novice when it comes to Jquery and a relative novice when it comes to Rails. I don't know where to being in order to add this functionality.

Any help in this area would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance :)

When I try to use the autocomplete with a scope that joins in another table, I get an error when the column used in the Where condition is not unique between the two tables.

This seems to be because the Where condition generated does not prefix the requested column name with the table name.

Basically, I want the drop down to have the count for the item next to it. For that I am using these two methods:

def count
Tag.joins("JOIN taggings AS t ON t.tag_id = tags.id").where("t.tag_id = ?", self.id).count
end

def display
"#{self.name} (#{self.count})"
end

autocomplete :tag, :name, :full => true, :display_value => :display

However, while I want to show the count in the drop down menu, I only want the name of the tag to populate the field itself. I am novice and rails and jquery and unsure how to do this.

I found maybe same problem like Issue#8. Attribute value= is missing in Edit action:

just formtastic: OK
<%= semantic_form_for(@contact) do |f| %>
<%= f.input :company_name %>

with autocompleted_input: value attribute is missing
<%= f.autocompleted_input :company_name,
:url => autocomplete_company_name_contacts_path %>

After investigating formtastic helper autocompleted_input i found there is no need to have this helper. You can use :input_html key in formtastic.

This works:
<%= f.input :company_name,
:input_html => {:autocomplete => "/contacts/autocomplete_company_name" } %>

Is there a way to select multiple items and have the form element as select and not text_area?

Well I wanted to fetch only distinct model object, comparates by only two attributes (while the table has 10+ attributes). I will share here my unobstrosive solution, without forking, if someone is interested.

It's pretty simple so I won't add anything. Here's the code :

yourmodel.rb :

#overrired of where for auto complete
def self.where(arg0)

    tabIds = []

    # traiter pour le autocomplete mais laisser la possibilité pour les autres
    case arg0
        when Array; tabInit = Place.find_by_sql("select * from Places where #{sanitize_sql_array(arg0)}")
        else tabInit = Place.find_by_sql("select * from Places where #{arg0}")
    end

    # enlever les doublons
    tabInit.each_with_index do |place, i|
        doublonFound = false
        tabInit.each_with_index do |place2, j|
            if j > i && !doublonFound
                doublonFound = place.eql?(place2)
            end 
        end
        if !doublonFound
            tabIds << place.id
        end
    end

    # retourner un truc que limit() ou autre fonction AR pourra traiter
    return super.where("id in (?)", tabIds)
end

def eql?(other)
    return self.name==other.name && self.where==other.where
end

Since autocomplete-rails.js is entirely wrapped in $(document).ready(...) it will only work with elements that are on the page when the document is initially rendered. This causes forms that are rendered via ajax to not work with autocompletion.

<%= autocomplete_field_tag :entity, "", "/cats/autocomplete", :delay => 10000 %>

I would expect my results to take a long time to come up but, it seems to be taking the default value for delay. Similarly, minLength doesn't seem to work. Am I just doing something wrong?

Any chance this will work with edge Rails anytime soon? I'm using rails-3.1.0.beta1, and I get the following:

Bundler could not find compatible versions for gem "rails":
  In Gemfile:
    rails3-jquery-autocomplete (~> 0.7.3) depends on
      rails (~> 3.0.0)

    rails (3.1.0.beta1)

Many thanks!
John

Hi!

Having an Order which belongs_to client, in the Order view I want to auto-complete the Client name (Client.name).
When I try to use this plugin like the documentation says, I've got the following error:
"Model Order does not respond to client_name"

and the only way to get ride of this error is to create the method client_name in the Order model.

Thanks for your attention!

Having an Order which belongs_to client, in the Order view I want to auto-complete the Client name (Client.name), so the generated route method is autocomplete_client_name_orders_path instead of autocomplete_client_name_path like the documentation suggests.

Thanks for your attention!

Thanks for the plugin... I was surprised that there was no mention of adding a DB Column Index on the field that the autocomplete is searching against. If you have 1000s of names that you are autocompleting against, w/o an index wouldn't the system die? thxs again

Formtastic 2.0 has deprecated Formtastic::SemanticFormBuilder in favor of Formtastic::FormBuilder. So if you are using Formtastic 2.0 you need to change the line

class Formtastic::SemanticFormBuilder < ActionView::Helpers::FormBuilder
to
class Formtastic::FormBuilder < ActionView::Helpers::FormBuilder

from rails3-jquery-autocomplete.rb file

This seems to document a new functionality for this plugin, while the detailed example documents the old way. Please make them work the same way; I'm a bit confused.

Also, it's not working! Whichever way I put it together (old way or new way, I get this error:

undefined method `downcase' for nil:NilClass

with no application trace, and a full trace showing the culprit as

rails3-jquery-autocomplete (0.3.4) lib/rails3-jquery-autocomplete.rb:35:in `autocomplete_person_name'

Can you tell if I'm doing something incorrectly? There are a lot of moving parts here. I'd be willing to help fix it, but I'm not quite sure what the problem is.

Thanks!

I tried this afternoon to come to a solution to allow scoped queries for autocomplete. It is pretty easy to do, I just don't know how to create a patch for Git. So I will explain what to do:

1. Define a new key for the options (name :scope).
2. Add the 2 lines to the file helpers
   scope = options[:scope];
   model = model.send(scope) if scope

The meaning is, that if the option for :scope is defined, it will be used before the where-clause.

To use it then, you have to use the following:

1. Define in your model the scope:
   scope :valid, lambda { where('state_id in (?)', State.find(:all, :conditions => ["valid_in_work_item = ?", true]).collect{ | s | s.id}) }
2. Use that scope in the controller
   autocomplete :super_task, :title, :limit => 1000, :full => true, :scope => :valid, :class_name => Task

Is there any option to mark the autocomplete field as case insensitive?
As my column is case insensitive, this would greatly improve the performance by removing the LOWER() function from the sql.

The current situation is that you have to declare how autocomplete is used in the controller. I would like to have a way to express that the same model in the same controller may have different autocomplete_fields which behave differently. Just an example to show how that could be useful:

There could be 2 UIs to conntect to tasks in the same Controller, one that allows to choose freely from all available, the other to scope the selection by some additional where-clause.

At the moment, the definition of the clause is done in the controller in the declaration like
autocomplete :task, :title, :limit => 1000, :full => true

I would like to use these options in the UI as well, so I could overwrite the default options defined here. So one UI could look like:

<%= f.autocomplete_field :task, autocomplete_task_title_work_items_path, :id_element => "#task_id" %>

The other would look like:

  <%= f.autocomplete_field :task, autocomplete_task_title_work_items_path, :id_element => "#task_id", :full => false, :scope => :valid %>

I don't see a way to reach that currently without modifying the implementation deeply. Perhaps someone else has an idea how to do it with modest changes.

Hi there,

I tried to implement your gem in combination with mongoid and failed. Would it be possible to add mongoid compatibility?

Best regards
sewid

It appears the default behavior is to auto submit on selection by clicking. Interestingly, this doesn't happen when using the Return key to select. I've tried using :submit_on_select => false, and it has no effect, still autosubmits on mouse selection. Is this correct, expected behavior?

Hello, you have a great gem and your example is very useful.
My autocomplete is working fine but I can't get it work with ID instead of name. I get Posicion(#120841716) expected, got String(#27769884), and if I look into parameters, its passing the name (nombre) instead of the ID...

Here is my code, hope you can help me..

vacantes_controller.rb (Already verified the id of the field)

autocomplete :posicion, :nombre, :full => :true, :id_element => '#vacante_posicion'

_form.html.erb

resources :vacantes do
get :autocomplete_posicion_nombre, :on => :collection
end

should probably be data-autocomplete - otherwise we're officially not support to start adding random attributes...

Why do I have this error?

undefined method `key?' for "/messages/autocomplete_account_name":String

I followed as far as I can tell the instructions and rake routes shows that I should have a route called autocomplete_account_name_messages, but it's using this odd "key?" method instead.

Hi,

When I try to use autocomplete with nested models, this doesn't work :
Model Transport does not respond to geonames_country_country.

I have two models : People, and Transports. And a model GeonamesCountry in a plugin.
People has many Transports.

I have added this to controller Transports:
autocomplete :geonames_country, :country

Routes are :
resources :people do
resources :transports do
get :autocomplete_geonames_country_country, :on => :collection
end
end

So forms are like :
<%= form_for [@person, @transport] do |f| %>
<%= f.autocomplete_field :geonames_country_country, autocomplete_geonames_country_country_person_transports_path %>
<%= f.error_messages %>

<%= f.label :go_date %>

<%= f.date_select :go_date %>

Note that works without nested models.

How I can get this to work?

Thanks

First off, thank you for maintaining this gem, it's fantastic!

I am doing an autocomplete on a location. We have a Location model and a method within the Location model to return the city and state for the location to be displayed in the field. However, the field is updated with the id and not the value of the method described below. I am able to return data as I can see the type ahead suggestion appear below the field, as well as the JSON result in the Firefox Inspect Element 'Net/XHR' tab.

## Location model

def city_state
    "#{self.city.titleize}, #{self.state.upcase}" if self.city && self.state
  end

## Job Postings controller

autocomplete :location, :city, :display_value => :city_state, :extra_data => [:state, :latitude, :longitude]

# Search form partial
.
.
.
<%= autocomplete_field_tag :location, "#{ @geo.city_state if @geo }", location_autocomplete_path,
      :update_elements => { :id => "input#location" }, :placeholder => "City, State" %></li>
.
.
.

# Route

get "job_postings/autocomplete_location_city", :as => "location_autocomplete"

f.autocompleted_input :city_id, :url => autocomplete_city_name_places_path, :id_element => "#id_element_placeholder"

As in the request not to betray the name of the object and he vowed to assoсciation