The AutoSuggest class adds a
pulldown menu of suggested values to a text field. The user can
either click directly on a suggestion to enter it into the
field, or navigate the list using the up and down arrow keys,
selecting a value using the enter key. The values for the
suggestion list are to provided as XML, or as JSON (by
a PHP script, or similar).
The results of the first request
are cached on the client machine and are filtered as the user
continues to type, to reduce the number of requests hitting the
server.
In the JSON example above a
callback function is passed to the autoSuggest instance. It is
called when the user selects an entry, and inserts the entry id
into a hidden field (visible for this example).
In the XML example below
supplementary information is being displayed along with the
names, in this case an english county.