Rails spinoffs - Aug 2005 - Quick Question on Autocompleter Parameters

Hello,


Is it possible to send the current value of a second form element with
the AJAX request on the Autocompleter? At the moment, I initialise the
Autocompleter on page load, so any parameters passed in the constructor
are given the value set at page load time. I need to obviously pass in
the value of the second form element when the autocompleter is called.

Does this function already exist, or where should I look to try and add
it?

Thanks


Paul Shannon

Web Applications Developer
Codeweavers Limited

On 8/5/05, Paul Shannon <Paul.Shannon@codeweavers.net>
wrote:
> Hello,
Hey,
> 
> 
> Is it possible to send the current value of a second form element with
> the AJAX request on the Autocompleter? At the moment, I initialise the
> Autocompleter on page load, so any parameters passed in the constructor
> are given the value set at page load time. I need to obviously pass in
> the value of the second form element when the autocompleter is called.
> 
> Does this function already exist, or where should I look to try and add
> it?
I don''t think you can do this with the stock source, but if you look
at the getUpdatedChoices method, you can see where it builds the URL
that is passed to the AJAX handler.

You could either hack this for your specific needs (bad!) or you could
implement something that takes an array of input names in preference
to a single input name and build the URI based on the contents of the
array. I''m sure you won''t be the only person to want to do
this, so
option 2 would be nice, if you have the time :-)

Hope that helps,
Rob.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> 
> Paul Shannon
> 
> Web Applications Developer
> Codeweavers Limited
> _______________________________________________
> Rails-spinoffs mailing list
> Rails-spinoffs@lists.rubyonrails.org
> http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails-spinoffs
> 

-- 
Rob Sharp

  email/jabber: rob@sharp.id.au
  web: http://sharp.id.au
  pgp: 0E2C C63B BA04 DEB4 7CC0 84FD 17E3 6AA4 87FB 62DF

Thanks for the hint Rob,

I have this working for me now, I simply add an array of text field IDs
when creating a new Autocomplete instance:

... parameters: new Array(''formfield1'',
''formfield2'') ...


The edited getUpdatedChoices function is as follows:

[code]
getUpdatedChoices: function() {
    entry = encodeURIComponent(this.element.name) + ''='' + 
      encodeURIComponent(this.getEntry());
      
    
    
    this.options.parameters = this.options.callback ?
      this.options.callback(this.element, entry) : entry;
        
    if(this.options.defaultParams) {
      //EDIT: Paul Shannon Codeweavers Ltd 2005
      if(typeof(this.options.defaultParams) == typeof("")) {
		this.options.parameters += ''&'' +
this.options.defaultParams;
      } else {
		for (var count = 0; count <
this.options.defaultParams.length; count++) {
			this.options.parameters += ''&''
				+
document.getElementById(this.options.defaultParams[count]).name
				+ ''=''
				+
document.getElementById(this.options.defaultParams[count]).value;
		}
      }
     }
    
    new Ajax.Request(this.url, this.options);
  },
[/code]


Hopefully this can be included without side effecting the stock method
of passing POST parameters. It doesn''t effect anything in my use case
but others may differ. Please feel free to include this in the main
stock code if everyone feels it works well.

Paul


-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Sharp [mailto:rob.sharp@gmail.com] 
Sent: 05 August 2005 13:08
To: Paul Shannon; rails-spinoffs@lists.rubyonrails.org
Subject: Re: [Rails-spinoffs] Quick Question on Autocompleter Parameters

On 8/5/05, Paul Shannon <Paul.Shannon@codeweavers.net>
wrote:
> Hello,
Hey,
> 
> 
> Is it possible to send the current value of a second form element with
> the AJAX request on the Autocompleter? At the moment, I initialise the
> Autocompleter on page load, so any parameters passed in the
constructor
> are given the value set at page load time. I need to obviously pass in
> the value of the second form element when the autocompleter is called.
> 
> Does this function already exist, or where should I look to try and
add
> it?
I don''t think you can do this with the stock source, but if you look
at the getUpdatedChoices method, you can see where it builds the URL
that is passed to the AJAX handler.

You could either hack this for your specific needs (bad!) or you could
implement something that takes an array of input names in preference
to a single input name and build the URI based on the contents of the
array. I''m sure you won''t be the only person to want to do
this, so
option 2 would be nice, if you have the time :-)

Hope that helps,
Rob.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> 
> Paul Shannon
> 
> Web Applications Developer
> Codeweavers Limited
> _______________________________________________
> Rails-spinoffs mailing list
> Rails-spinoffs@lists.rubyonrails.org
> http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails-spinoffs
> 

-- 
Rob Sharp

  email/jabber: rob@sharp.id.au
  web: http://sharp.id.au
  pgp: 0E2C C63B BA04 DEB4 7CC0 84FD 17E3 6AA4 87FB 62DF