Question

I’m using James Smith’s excellent tokenized input plugin for a search box of sorts. (PHP backend.) I’m trying to prepopulate the input but only some of the time – for example, if the user has passed my URL a parameter.

Normal initialization:

$("#tokenized").tokenInput("http://www.my.url/index.php", {
theme: "facebook",
});

As desired, this starts me with a blank box and everything’s good.

Using the nifty prePopulate paramater:

$("#tokenized").tokenInput("http://www.my.url/index.php", {
theme: "facebook",
prePopulate: [<?php echo json_encode($initialValue); ?>]
});

$initialValue is an array with ‘id’ and ‘name’. This also works great when it’s set to something. But that’s my problem – only some of the time will it be set. I’ve tried sending it a zero-element array as well as one with empty values. Setting the array to null produces the expected uncaught exception. The box refuses to not prepopulate if it’s one of these – creating an entry for ‘undefined’ or ‘{space}’. I want it to be empty, as the first example above.

How can I tell my page to only prepopulate if my initial value is set? Can I do some sort of if() condition inline to the initialization?

Also, jQuery beginner here – as above, still using ‘php echo’ to get my value across. Is there a better way?

Thanks!

Answer 1

echo is perfectly fine. Try this:

$("#tokenized").tokenInput("http://www.my.url/index.php", {
theme: "facebook"
<?php if($initialValue){ ?>, prePopulate: [<?php echo json_encode($initialValue); ?>]<?php } ?>
});

It only adds the prePopulate parameter if initialValue is set.