Question

I have an autocomplete field and have it’s source set to an array of friends.

 GetFollowing(9, function(response)
                    {
                        if (response)
                        {
                            donor.following = response;
                            for (var i = 0; i < response.length -1; i++)
                            {
                                // make sure we have an image to display
                                if (response[i].image != null)
                                {
                                    $("#following").prepend("<li title='" + response[i].firstname + " " + response[i].lastname +
                                        "'><img src='<?php echo $baseUrl;?>/uploads/profile-pictures/" + response[i].image +
                                        "' alt='" + response[i].firstname + " " + response[i].lastname + "'/></li>");

                                    // add to the friends array
                                    if (! $.inArray(response[i].firstname + " " + response[i].lastname, friends))
                                        friends.push(response[i].firstname + " " + response[i].lastname);
                                }
                            }
                        }
                    });
                    GetFollowers(9, function(response)
                    {
                        if (response)
                        {
                            donor.followers = response;
                            for (var i = 0; i < response.length -1; i++)
                            {
                                // make sure we have an image to display
                                if (response[i].image != null)
                                {
                                    $("#followers").prepend("<li title='" + response[i].firstname + " " + response[i].lastname +
                                        "'><img src='<?php echo $baseUrl;?>/uploads/profile-pictures/" + response[i].image +
                                        "' alt='" + response[i].firstname + " " + response[i].lastname + "'/></li>");

                                    // Add to the friends array
                                    friends.push(response[i].firstname + " " + response[i].lastname);
                                }
                            }
                        }
                        // setup jquery-ui autocomplete
                        $("#msg-to").autocomplete({source: friends});
                    });

My problem is I need to associate an id with the value that is selected, how can this be done?

Answer 1

http://jqueryui.com/demos/autocomplete/

you should read the overview more.

Expected data format

The data from local data, a url or a callback can come in two
variants:

• An Array of Strings:

[ "Choice1", "Choice2" ]

• An Array of Objects with
  label and value properties:

[ { label: "Choice1", value: "value1" }, ... ]

The label property is displayed in the suggestion menu. The value will be inserted into the input element after the user selected something from the menu. If just one property is specified, it will be used for both, eg. if you provide only value-properties, the value will also be used as the label.

use the label for textual representation, the value for the id per item in the selection.

you should also differentiate the textbox used for the visual version (which displays words) from the data version (a hidden input which contains id’s) – similar to those of the datepicker widget (aka. alternate data). this can all be manipulated using the settings.