Question

I want to develop an autocomplete input.

I have my controller action for this:

def autocomplete_airports
    render :json => WebService.get_airports(params[:airports_input])
end

get_airports returns entries separated by commas (,):

def self.get_airports(code)
    #SOAP Action
    begin response = @@client_airports_codes.request :tem, 'airports' do
        soap.body =
          {
          "tem:prefixText" => code,
          "tem:count" => @@airport_response_count
        }
      end
    rescue Savon::SOAP::Fault => fault
      puts fault.to_s
    end
    #preparing response
    json = ""
    response.to_hash[:airports_response][:airports_result][:string].each{
      |key| json = json + key.to_s + ","
    }
    return json
  end

In my view:

<form id="airport_form" class="center" action="">
  <label for="airports_input">Airport/City</label>
  <br />
  <input type="text" name="airports_input" id="airports_input" />
</form>

And my JavaScript:

$('#airports_input').autocomplete('/WebServices/autocomplete_airports');

But, it doesn’t work.

what should I do?

Thank you!

Answer 1

I think you need to return an array of key-value pairs to make this work. Look @ my answer to to another recent question.

I’ll add the relevant model code not contained in that answer here (note: Rails 3.0):

def self.search(search = nil)
  if search
    where('name LIKE ?', "%#{search}%") | tagged_with("%#{search}%")
  else
    scoped
  end
end

def self.autocomplete(search)
  results = search(search)
  results.map! { |result| {:value => result.name} }
end

Hope this helps.