Question

I have a select option list and im using jQuery Mobile. My list is very long so Id like to give users the option of searching the list by typing in text.

Is there some native / jQuery Mobile way of adding a text search when you focus on the list? If not I guess instead on an input ill need to create a link to a new page with a filter list, and use javascript to populate the ‘input’ with the value selected.

http://jquerymobile.com/test/docs/lists/lists-search.html

Answer 1

The short answer is no, unless you want to go nuts editing the JQM code to add that feature to the select box. That being said, I also had this problem (with the select menus being way too long), and here’s what I did:

For one scenario, I used an autocomplete search box (that had results drop down: http://jqueryui.com/demos/autocomplete/) in addition to the select menu, populated with the data in the select menu. That way the user could choose whether to use the select menu or search.

For a second scenario, I allowed the user to search for something, then brought up a menu (really a dialog plugin) with only the results that matched what they searched for.

Hope this helps.