Modifying auto_complete for realistic use

2008-06-26 20:00:00 -0400

We use the Rails auto_complete plugin in both PingMe and Tempo, and while it’s incredibly handy, it takes a little bit of hacking to use it on a page where it will be used more than once. In the main time screen on Tempo any of the entries can be opened for editing, meaning more than one can be open at once, and each has its own auto complete field for tags:

Similarly in PingMe, we’ve got a list of pings on the screen, each a potential edit form (more than one can be edited at once), with auto complete on the tags field:

In this situation, when each form has the text_field_with_auto_complete in use, each has the same DOM ID: object_method, so ping_tags in PingMe and entry_tags in Tempo. Screwy things happen when you try to remotely update a DOM ID used more than once on a page, and those screwy things tend to change based on your browser, but basically the auto_complete plugin out-of-the-box will not work in this scenario.

We got around this by doing a bit of monkey patching to the auto complete plugin. This is what the initial text_field_with_auto_complete method looks like inside the plugin’s auto_complete_macros_helper.rb:

def text_field_with_auto_complete(object, method, tag_options = {}, completion_options = {})
    (completion_options[:skip_style] ? "" : auto_complete_stylesheet) +
    text_field(object, method, tag_options) +
    content_tag("div", "", :id => "#{object}_#{method}_auto_complete", :class => "auto_complete") +
    auto_complete_field("#{object}_#{method}", { :url => { :action => "auto_complete_for_#{object}_#{method}" } }.update(completion_options))
end

What we do is add an extra, optional parameter to this method that accepts an id, that we then patch in as the dom id we’ll use:

module AutoCompleteMacrosHelper
  def text_field_with_auto_complete(object, method, tag_options = {}, completion_options = {}, object_id = nil)
    field_id = (object_id.nil?) ? "#{object}_#{method}" : "#{object}_#{object_id}_#{method}"
    (completion_options[:skip_style] ? "" : auto_complete_stylesheet) +
    text_field(object, method, tag_options.merge({:id => field_id})) +
    content_tag("div", "", :id => "#{field_id}_auto_complete", :class => "auto_complete") +
    auto_complete_field(field_id, { :url => { :action => "auto_complete_for_#{object}_#{method}" } }.update(completion_options))
  end
end

Now, on the form/template itself, we use this to generate the text field and type ahead div (we’re using HAML, not RHTML):

= text_field_with_auto_complete :entry, :tag_s, {:size => 50}, { :indicator => "entry_#{entry.id}_tag_s_form_loader", :frequency => 0.4, :tokens => ' ' }, entry.id
= image_tag 'loading.gif', {:id => "entry_#{entry.id}_tag_s_form_loader", :style => 'display: none;'}
.auto_complete{:id => "entry_#{entry.id}_tag_s_auto_complete", :style => "display: none;"}

You’ll notice that each dom id is of the format entry_#id_tag_s_*.

In our controller, we have a few things that we need, nothing that complex:

auto_complete_for :entry, :tag_s

  def auto_complete_for_entry_tag_s
    unless params[:entry].nil? || params[:entry][:tag_s].blank?
      tags = @current_user.tags.collect{|tag| tag.name.downcase.index(params[:ping][:tag_s].downcase) == 0 ? tag.name : nil}.compact
      render :partial => 'autocomplete', :locals => { :items => tags }
    end
  end

Finally, we create a partial called ‘_autocomplete.haml’ that cranks through the items when the suggestions are displayed:

%ul.autocomplete_list
  - items.each do |item|
    %li.autocomplete_item= h item

Happily, this isn’t very different from the way the plugin recommends you do things, but allows you to support more than one field on the page at once when you have multiple instances of an object. I’m actually a bit surprised that there isn’t an inherent facility in the plugin for this, but it’s good learning for anyone looking to see how it’s done.

I should note that the above doesn’t denote how we really select out the set of tags for a user in Tempo, but it’s a simple example of how one might do it ;-)

blog comments powered by Disqus