Question

jQuery v1.2.6

jQuery.autocompleter plugin v1.1pre (from jQuery’s website)

I am not able to submit with ‘type: “POST”‘ back to my webservice. I can’t get it to be recognized by the autocompleter. Thoughts?

This code below works fine, as long as I look for the “q” querystring. But, I would like to use this for more advanced features in the future by passing more params, and would appreciate how to post back using the autocompleter.

I am aware of the extraParams option. But, those are extra parameters that get submitted via GET or POST (if we can get POST working). It doesn’t change it to submit as a POST.

$(function() {
    $('#searchBox').autocomplete(
        "/services/college.asmx/lookupColleges",
        {
            delay: 5,
            minChars: 1,
            matchSubset: 1,
            matchContains: 1,
            cacheLength: 10,
            autoFill: false,
            dataType: 'json',
            parse: function(data) {
                var rows = new Array();
                for (var i = 0; i < data.length; i++) {
                    rows[i] = {
                        data: data[i]
                        , value: data[i].Data
                        , result: data[i].Name
                    };
                }
                return rows;
            },
            formatItem: function(row, i, n) {
                return row.Name;
            }
        }).result(function(event, row) {
            processSelection(this, row.Data);
        });
});

I tried adding the option for POST, like noted in the code sample below. But it still submits as a GET.

delay: 5,
minChars: 1,
matchSubset: 1,
matchContains: 1,
cacheLength: 10,
autoFill: false,
dataType: 'json',
type: 'POST',

Any help is appreciated.

Thank you!

PS, lots of this is undocumented, and was a PITA to figure out after trial and error. Thank goodness for Firebug.

You’ll note that I am:

• receiving JSON back from the webservice
• the Autocomplete is not able to handle JSON natively, so I have to parse it into my own array.
• Since I am now passing back a custom array object, the formatItem needs to be overwritten in order to process the new array object for Displaying purposes.
• And finally the money shot, I am wanting to process the extra data on that row after the user selects a Row (mouse-click or TAB or ENTER key). I do this with the result() delegate.

I really hope the above code helps others in the future figure out the autocompleter as well as it all required reverse engineering.

Tip: The property names data[i].Data and data[i].Name are the JSON property names.

Answer 1

At this time (Autocompleter 1.1pre), there isn’t a way to get it to post without changing the plugin’s code.

I just left it submitting querystrings for now. Thank you all for answered, I upped the vote.