Rails - Apr 2005 - Look-up field

I''m looking for a way to do a lookup field for linked tables like you 
can in MS Access. I''d like to have an autocomplete field with dropdown 
box ala Google Suggest. But rather than post the value of autocompleted 
text I want it to post the foriegn key value of the selected item. I''ll
have at the very least thousands of records in my foreign key tables so 
using a select box like the OnLamp cookbook tutorial does for categories 
is not feasable. Is something like this possible with Rails Ajax support?

-- Jack Christensen

On Apr 6, 2005 7:09 AM, Jack Christensen
<jack-BsDU1ACF2Bglk5EcyZIkJQ@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> I''m looking for a way to do a lookup field for linked tables like
you
> can in MS Access. I''d like to have an autocomplete field with
dropdown
> box ala Google Suggest. But rather than post the value of autocompleted
> text I want it to post the foriegn key value of the selected item.
I''ll
> have at the very least thousands of records in my foreign key tables so
> using a select box like the OnLamp cookbook tutorial does for categories
> is not feasable. Is something like this possible with Rails Ajax support?
Yup, it''s very possible.  Look into the observe_field
(http://rails.rubyonrails.com/classes/ActionView/Helpers/JavascriptHelper.html#M000334)
helper.  It''s all very new, so there''s nothing you can drop in
to have
a fully functional live search in seconds.  I think with a little
tinkering, you can get something going pretty quickly.


-- 
rick
http://techno-weenie.net