Question

I am having great difficulty in successfully parsing a JSON file to use within JQuery UI autocomplete

Please see my dev page: http://www.zyredesign.com/autocomplete

The JSON isn’t organised as well as I would have hoped as the items keys are ID’s eg:

{“140″:”Abarth”,
“375”:”Acura”
}

Etc….

Here is my javascript attempt:

$(document).ready(function() {


    $('#cars').autocomplete({
        source: function()
        {


            $.getJSON('json.json', function(data)
            {
                cars_array = new Array();

                $.each(data, function(k, v) { 

                    cars_array.push(v);

                 })

                alert( cars_array);

                return cars_array;
            })


        },
        minLength: 3,
        focus: function( event, ui ) {},
        select: function( event, ui ) {
            $('#suggestions').html(ui);

            return false;
        }
    });

});

/*
function get_json()
{
var items = new Array();

$.getJSON('json.json', function(data) {
  var items = [];


  alert(  eval ("(" + data + ")") ); 

 // $.each(data, function(key, val) {
    //items.push('<li id="' + key + '">' + val + '</li>');

 // });

  $('<ul/>', {
    'class': 'my-new-list',
    html: items.join('')
  }).appendTo('body');
});

return items;
}
*/

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

Answer 1

The function you’ve supplied for the source: attribute doesn’t return a value. The $.get() function does, but that won’t reach the source attribute.

    source: function()
    {
        $.getJSON('json.json', function(data)
        {
            cars_array = new Array();
            $.each(data, function(k, v) { 
               cars_array.push(v);
            })
            return cars_array;
        })
        //You need to return something here
    }

Also, it may be an issue that you’re using an asynchronous call to the json file in a synchronous pattern. In other words, consider this:

    $.getJSON('json.json', function(data)
    {
        cars_array = new Array();
        $.each(data, function(k, v) { 
           cars_array.push(v);
        })

        //Now you definitely have the cars so you can do the autocomplete
        $('#cars').autocomplete({
            source:cars_array,
            minLength: 3,
            focus: function( event, ui ) {},
            select: function( event, ui ) {
            $('#suggestions').html(ui);
            return false;
        }
    });