Question

I am using the jQuery autocomplete plugin. Is there a way that when a user enters a textbox (that is wired up to have autocomplete) the list appears with the top alphabetical items? Some sort of trigger?

jQuery Code

$('.someTextbox').autocomplete({
    source: function (request, response) {
        $.ajax({
            url: serviceUrl + "/AddDocumentLinesService.svc/GetLineTypes",
            contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
            dataType: "json",
            cache: false, 
            data: {
                maxRows: 10,
                textStartsWith: request.term
            },
            success: function (data) {
                response($.map(data, function (item) {
                    return {
                        label: item.LineTypeCode + ' - (' + item.Description + ')',
                        value: item.LineTypeCode
                    }
                }));
            },
            error: function (XMLHttpRequest, textStatus, errorThrown) {
                alert(textStatus);
            }
        });
    }
});

I would like it so that the second the user enters the ‘$(‘.someTextbox’)’ textbox the list appears.

Answer 1

Try:

 $('.someTextbox').focus(function() { $(this).search(); });

According to the documentation, .search() triggers the search manually. You can also set options.minChars to 0 and the options.delay to something small, which should also work. See: http://docs.jquery.com/Plugins/Autocomplete/autocomplete#url_or_dataoptions