Question

I’m trying to get the autocomplete plugin to populate one textbox with the university name and another with the university code. The code below returns results and populates the university name textbox, but I can’t figure out how to populate another input.

I’ve tried following this example, but came across problems to even call the webmethod. One odd thing about this was that it seemed that the ajax was called before the autocomplete was attached to the textbox where the user types. Not sure what was triggering the js to call the autocomplete method.

I had to combine parts from the above with the jquery ui doc on autocomplete using json (link). But I still don’t know how to get the second input to be populated as in the first example.

any ideas?

Here’s the jquery and html

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
    $(function () {
        $("#university").autocomplete({
            source: function (request, response) {
                $.ajax({
                    type: "POST",
                    url: "AutoComplete.asmx/GetUniversities",
                    dataType: "json",
                    data: "{ 'data': '" + request.term + "' }",
                    contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
                    success: function (data) {
                        response($.map(data, function (item) {
                            return {                                    
                                value: item.Descr,
                                UnivCode: item.UnivCode

                            }                                
                        }));
                    }
                });
            } 
        });          
    });
</script>
<div class="ui-widget"> 
    <label for="university">University: </label> 
    <input id="university" type="text"/> 
    <label for="universityID">ID: </label> 
    <input id="universityID" type="text" /> 
</div> 

Here’s my .net webmethod

using System;
using System.Web;
using System.Collections;
using System.Web.Services;
using System.Web.Services.Protocols;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Web.Script.Services;
using System.Text;
using System.Data;

[ScriptService()]
[WebService(Namespace = "http://tempuri.org/")]
[WebServiceBinding(ConformsTo = WsiProfiles.BasicProfile1_1)]

public class AutoComplete : System.Web.Services.WebService
{

    [WebMethod]
    [ScriptMethod(ResponseFormat = ResponseFormat.Json)]
    public List<University> GetUniversities(string data)
    {
        List<University> UniversityList = new List<University>();

        try
        {
            clsDataBase db = new clsDataBase();
            DataTable dt = new DataTable();
            StringBuilder sql = new StringBuilder();
            Dictionary<string, object> parms = new Dictionary<string, object>();

            sql.Append(" SELECT univ_code ");
            sql.Append(" , INITCAP(univ_desc) AS descr ");
            sql.Append(" FROM lk_university ");
            sql.Append(" WHERE UPPER(univ_desc) LIKE UPPER(?) ");
            sql.Append(" ORDER BY univ_desc  ");
            parms.Add("university", "%" + data + "%");

            dt = db.executeParmQuery(sql.ToString(), parms);
            DataView dv = new DataView(dt);


            ArrayList filteredList = new ArrayList();

            foreach (DataRowView drv in dv)
            {
                University university = new University();
                university.UnivCode= drv["univ_code"].ToString();
                university.Descr = drv["descr"].ToString();

                UniversityList.Add(university);
            }
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            throw new Exception(ex.Message);
            //return null;
        }
        //}
        return UniversityList;
    }


    public class University
    {        
        string _value;
        public string value
        {
            get { return _Descr + " (" + _UnivCode + ")"; }            
        }

        string _Descr;
        public string Descr
        {
            get { return _Descr; }
            set { _Descr = value; }
        }

        string _UnivCode;
        public string UnivCode
        {
            get { return _UnivCode; }
            set { _UnivCode = value; }
        }
    }
}

EDIT

I was able to get it working by adding the select event. In my previous testing I had it in there, but in the wrong spot (initially nested in the success event). Also had to add the three lines in the success event that set value: item.Descr, Descr: item.Descr, and UnivCode: item.UnivCode. I don’t quite understand what these are referencing or what they’re doing, since the actual setting of inputs is done in the select event where I specify the actual id’s of the inputs ($(‘#university’).val(ui.item.Descr);), but this was needed to get the code to work.

Here’s the working jquery without any other changes to the html or the .net code.

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
    $(function () {
        $("#university").autocomplete({
            source: function (request, response) {
                $.ajax({
                    type: "POST",
                    url: "AutoComplete.asmx/GetUniversities",
                    dataType: "json",
                    data: "{ 'data': '" + request.term + "' }",
                    contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
                    success: function (data) {
                        response($.map(data, function (item) {
                            return {
                                value: item.Descr,
                                Descr: item.Descr,
                                UnivCode: item.UnivCode
                            }
                        }));
                    }
                });
            },
            select: function (event, ui) {
                $('#university').val(ui.item.Descr);
                $('#universityID').val(ui.item.UnivCode);                    
                return false;
            }
        });
    });

Answer 1

I was able to get it working by adding the select event. In my previous testing I had it in there, but in the wrong spot (initially nested in the success event). Also had to add the three lines in the success event that set value: item.Descr, Descr: item.Descr, and UnivCode: item.UnivCode. I don’t quite understand what these are referencing or what they’re doing, since the actual setting of inputs is done in the select event where I specify the actual id’s of the inputs ($(‘#university’).val(ui.item.Descr);), but this was needed to get the code to work.

Here’s the working jquery without any other changes to the html or the .net code.

$(function () {
    $("#university").autocomplete({
        source: function (request, response) {
            $.ajax({
                type: "POST",
                url: "AutoComplete.asmx/GetUniversities",
                dataType: "json",
                data: "{ 'data': '" + request.term + "' }",
                contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
                success: function (data) {
                    response($.map(data, function (item) {
                        return {
                            value: item.Descr,
                            Descr: item.Descr,
                            UnivCode: item.UnivCode
                        }
                    }));
                }
            });
        },
        select: function (event, ui) {
            $('#university').val(ui.item.Descr);
            $('#universityID').val(ui.item.UnivCode);                    
            return false;
        }
    });
});