Question

I need to parse JSON in jQuery autocomplete function. I used following code.

jQuery("#name").autocomplete( '<?php echo HTTP_PATH.'/songs/sss'; ?>', {
multiple: true,
mustMatch: true,
matchContains: true,
autoFill: false,
dataType: "json",
});

My cake Controller regarding that is

public function sss(){
$condition = array('Poet.status'=>'3');
$poet_name = $this->Poet->find('list', array('conditions' => $condition));
//pr($poet_name); exit;
echo json_encode($poet_name);
$this->autoRender = false;
}

I am receiving my data as simple array. Means

Array(
[1]=>Abc,
[15]=>Xyz
[56]=>MNK
[77]=>skl
[85]=>qw5s
)

How can I parse read and format following returned array with jquery.

Answer 1

JQuery Autocomplete requires label and/or value, where the label is displayed. Unless there is a need to parse json on the client side, I would do it on the server-side (simpler to me).

Being that you could insert the following:

$json_output = array();

foreach ($poet_name as $name) {
     $json_output[]['label'] = $name;
}

echo json_encode($json_output);

By formatting on the server-side, the json is preformatted for the json autocomplete making the markup on smaller resulting in a quicker upload of the page and less clutter.