Question

Ok so what i want to be able to do is to perform a suggestive style search using the contents of an array instead of a doing a mySQL database query on every keyup.

So imagine a javascript object or array that is full of people’s names:

var array = (jack,tom,john,sarah,barry,...etc);

I want to then query the contents of this array based on what the user has typed into the input box so far. So if they have typed ‘j’,both jack and john will be pulled out of the array.

I know this is possible via php mysql and ajax calls, but for reason of optimization I would like to be able to query the js array instead.

Hope someone can help me with this!

W.

Answer 1

as the name suggests, this finds elements of an array starting with the given string s.

Array.prototype.findElementsStartingWith = function(s) {
   var r = [];
   for(var i = 0; i < this.length; i++)
      if(this[i].toString().indexOf(s) === 0)
         r.push(this[i]);
   return r;
}

// example

a = ["foo", "bar", "fooba", "quu", "foooba"];
console.log(a.findElementsStartingWith("fo"))

the rest is basically the same as in ajax-based scripts.