ajax-chosen
v0.2.0
Published
A complement to the jQuery library Chosen that adds ajax autocomplete
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790
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Ajax-Chosen
This project is an addition to the excellent Chosen jQuery plugin that makes HTML input forms more friendly. Chosen adds search boxes to select
HTML elements, so I felt it could use the addition of ajax autocomplete for awesomely dynamic forms.
This script bootstraps the existing Chosen plugin without making any modifications to the original code. Eventually, I would love to see this functionality built-in to the library, but until then, this seems to work pretty well.
How to Use
This plugin exposes a new jQuery function named ajaxChosen
that we call on a select
element. The first argument consists of the options passed to the jQuery $.ajax function. The data
parameter is optional, and the success
callback is also optional.
The second argument is a callback that tells the plugin what HTML option
elements to make. It is passed the data returned from the ajax call, and you have to return an array of objects for which each item has a value
property corresponding to the HTML option
elements' value
attribute, and a text
property corresponding to the text to display for each option. In other words:
[{"value": 3, "text": "Ohio"}]
becomes:
<option value="3">Ohio</option>
or for grouping:
[{
group: true,
text: "Europe",
items: [
{ "value": "10", "text": "Stockholm" },
{ "value": "23", "text": "London" }
]
},
{
group: true,
text: "Asia",
items: [
{ "value": "36", "text": "Beijing" },
{ "value": "20", "text": "Tokyo" }
]
}]
becomes:
<optgroup label="Europe">
<option value="10">Stockholm</option>
<option value="23">London</option>
</optgroup>
<optgroup label="Asia">
<option value="36">Beijing</option>
<option value="20">Tokyo</option>
</optgroup>
Note:
Due to a bug in Chosen, it is necessary to change choosen.css
.
Add
display: list-item;
to
.chzn-container .chzn-results .group-result {
class
Options
There are some additional ajax-chosen specific options you can pass into the first argument to control its behavior.
minTermLength
: minimum number of characters that must be typed before an ajax call is firedafterTypeDelay
: how many milliseconds to wait after typing stops to fire the ajax calljsonTermKey
: the ajax request key to use for the search query (defaults toterm
)
Example Code
$("#example-input").ajaxChosen({
type: 'GET',
url: '/ajax-chosen/data.php',
dataType: 'json'
}, function (data) {
var results = [];
$.each(data, function (i, val) {
results.push({ value: val.value, text: val.text });
});
return results;
});
To have the results grouped in optgroup
elements, have the function return a list of group objects instead:
$("#example-input").ajaxChosen({
type: 'GET',
url: '/ajax-chosen/grouped.php',
dataType: 'json'
}, function (data) {
var results = [];
$.each(data, function (i, val) {
var group = { // here's a group object:
group: true,
text: val.name, // label for the group
items: [] // individual options within the group
};
$.each(val.items, function (i1, val1) {
group.items.push({value: val1.value, text: val1.text});
});
results.push(group);
});
return results;
});
Developing ajax-chosen
In order to install development dependencies, you can run in the ajax-chosen directory:
npm install -d
ajax-chosen is written in Coffeescript, so there is a Cakefile provided that will perform all necessary tasks for you. Simply run cake
to see all available commands.