JQuery And PHP Suggested Answers

Hey guys, there is a form where the user select some of his friends and I'm curious on how I can implement a list that searches simultaneously while the user is typing a friend's n

Solution 1:

You should take a look at the jquery auto-complete plugin:

http://docs.jquery.com/Plugins/autocomplete

Also, you could separate the names using commas.

Solution 2:

Are you looking to write your own plugin or would you like to use an existing one?

If you want something ready made, here are a few examples

if you want something extremely light, only 6kb packed, this one would be the best choice
Autosuggest jQuery Plugin

Older one but still good

Tokenizing Autocomplete

Solution 3:

This what already asked here on this site.

Facebook style JQuery autocomplete plugin

The accepted answer cited this jQuery code.

https://github.com/loopj/jQuery-Tokenizing-Autocomplete-Plugin

Solution 4:

http://jqueryui.com/demos/autocomplete/

Although think twice about including the whole jquery ui library for this one plugin

Solution 5:

I've implemented this a couple of times, it is not that difficult to achieve decent results and the basic idea that I used was...

1) create an input box.

2) create a div positioned directly underneath the input box.

3) create a jquery keypress handler. if there are more than x characters typed, ajax request.

4) loop through the results, and if they exist, append result divs to the result box.

5) show the result box.

I can dig up some example code if you would like. Not sure what you are talking about with the select multiple, but you could keep a variable of selected, and change the color of the result div when it is clicked on, this way many results can be selected and then processed later.