Question

I am using jQuery’s autocomplete function to fetch possible input labeles/values from suggest_address.php.

It looks like this:

Normally suggest_address.php returns an associative array of label and value .

But since suggest_address.php determines whether the input is of type “zip” or type “city”, I return an additional key/value pair: “type” :”city” or “type” : “zip”.

I want to store this value as an attribute in the input box so that it could it could be used in later queries.

How do I do this?
I know the source parameter for the autocomplete function could be a function that receives request, and response, but how do I get the response from it without modifying the source?

Right now my initialization looks like this:

$('#addresssearch').autocomplete({
                    source: 'suggest_address.php',
                    minLength: 2
                });

Answer 1

Your data object for each response can include any other key/value pairs you want. They then get included in the ui argument of event handlers.

For exeample

{ label:'Chicago', value:'chicago', bestPizza: 'Chicago Pizza'}


$('#addresssearch').autocomplete({
    source: 'suggest_address.php',
    minLength: 2,
    select: function(event, ui) {
        var pizza = ui.item.bestPizza;
    }
});

For a jQueryUI live demo example clcik on “View Source” in following API demo:

http://jqueryui.com/autocomplete/#custom-data