Comments on: Extended Autocomplete Helper

By: Jerome

Jerome — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:09:42 +0000

… Does not seem to work with labels containing extended characters (àéèü .etc…).
When I access the controller that generates the list it shows good in the browser, including extended characters, but when this same list displays in the autocompleter, extended characters are replaced by wierd characters … I am stuk for 2 days on this, a little help would be greate

By: David

David — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 10:04:26 +0000

Hi Nik, I would just like to say a big thank you for extending the functionality of the Autocomplete helper with your StrictAutocomplete helper.

By: Nik Chankov

Nik Chankov — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 13:10:01 +0000

Hi Joshua,

I’ve tried your suggestion on the example page in my blog, but both on IE6 and 7 there is no such problem. It’s working as expected.

By: Joshua

Joshua — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 11:26:25 +0000

Nik, sorry to bug you with another question, but maybe you have a bright idea on this one: My autocompleter (your helper displayed above) works perfectly fine in Firefox/Chrome. But IE (6-8) is troubling me: The autocomplete list does not appear immediately after entering text. Instead, it only appears if I enter some text, wait a second and afterwards modify it in any way, e.g. remove a letter.

Just for demostration purposes:
- I enter “testquery” (fairly quickly)
- No reaction
- I delete the “y”
- Autocomplete list appears (with the correct entries etc.)

Do you have any idea what might be causing this strange behavior?

By: Joshua

Joshua — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 18:20:31 +0000

Nik, thank you very much for your immediate response. With your help, I was able to figure out how to use the helper. Anyways, I will have a look at the jQuery-Version as well – although I hesitate to add another JS library to my project…

By: Nik Chankov

Nik Chankov — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:46:32 +0000

Joshua, I’ve restored the demo, it was because of hosting change and the db config wasn’t changed. Now it’s ok, but I would recommend to start using jQuery instead my helper.

Probably in the future I will create a demo how to use jQuery, but it’s still in “my head” stage. I would recommend this jQuery plugin http://www.pengoworks.com/workshop/jquery/autocomplete.htm

By: Joshua

Joshua — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:15:48 +0000

Hi Nik, thanks a lot for your efforts.
Unfortunately, your online demo site seems to have crashed – would it be possible for you to get it back working? I would love to include your helper into my project, but unfortunately I am somewhat stuck right now.
Thank you
Joshua

By: Joey

Joey — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 20:30:39 +0000

Thanks for the tips, it works like a charm now!

By: Nik Chankov

Nik Chankov — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 19:06:16 +0000

@Joey if you using FireFox you can use Firebug to track what you sending with the Ajax request. With the same tool you can see what you getting from the server as well. Check the console tab of Firebug.

I can see also that your where condition is wrong instead of

$this->Model->findAll(array(”name like '%SOMETHING'”))

it should be

$this->Model->findAll(array(”name like 'SOMETHING%'”))

It the first case you are searching end of the string, instead of beginning.

About the second question (it may be connected to the first one too) the debug is stopped from /yourapp/app/config/core.php there is a row (the first one) which is: Configure::write(‘debug’, 2); change the value to 1 or 0.

The reason why I think it’s connected to the first question is because although I am not using prototype in my current projects, I remember that autocomplete expect clear ul li tags, without any other stuff. So it’s possible when you downgrade your debug level this thing could start working :>

By: Joey

Joey — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 14:53:00 +0000

Thanks for your work Nik.

I have 2 questions:-

———————————————————-
A) In the server-side snipet you provide, I can read:-

$countries = $this->Country->findAll(array(“name like ‘”.$this->data[0]['autocomplete_auto'].”%’”));

I don’t understand where ‘autocomplete_auto’ comes from ($this->data[0]['autocomplete_auto']).

I have an issue that the autocomplete does not trigger – if I access the list directly through the action in the browser, which comes to findAll(array(“name like ‘%’”)) basically, I get the list of countries, but when Ajax code accesses it ; which comes to findAll(array(“name like ‘%SOMETHING’”))the list of choices does not appear – I suspect somehow the like clause is broken but I don’t know how to debug this – understanding how what the user entered ends-up in $this->data[0]['autocomplete_auto'] would be a great help.

———————————————————-
B) When I access a CakePHP action, the returned view always contains the SQL statistics (debug mode 1) – is there a way to remove this from the output, I suspect this might be an extra issue for the autocomplete to work OK.

Many thanks.