aurelia-autocomplete

aurelia-autocomplete is a plugin for the Aurelia platform for a autocomplete control.

Shamelessly ripped, improved, and packaged from a @jdanyow gist https://gist.github.com/jdanyow/acf8253329939b2e046cd0e3394351fe. Inspired by a want to escape a jQuery implementation we had been using in drivesoftware/aurelia-widgets.

Currently implemented for bootstrap but this could be abstracted in future.

Installation

npm install drivesoftware/aurelia-autocomplete

aurelia.json:

{
   "name": "aurelia-autocomplete",
   "main": "index",
   "path": "../node_modules/aurelia-autocomplete/dist/amd",
   "resources": [
      "*.js",
      "*.html",
      "autocomplete.css"
   ]
}

Basic Usage

Activate the plugin in your application's aurelia configure callback:

export function configure(aurelia) {
  aurelia.use
    .standardConfiguration()
    .plugin('aurelia-autocomplete');

  aurelia.start().then(a => a.setRoot());
}

In your view

<autocomplete value.bind="client" controller.bind="clientAutoCompleteController"></autocomplete>

In your view model

import {AutoCompleteController} from 'aurelia-autocomplete';

//...

this.client = null;
this.clientAutoCompleteController = new AutoCompleteController((searchText) => this.clientApi.search(searchText));

The default controller implementation provided expects a single constructor argument which is a search function suggestion[] search(string searchText). The result of the search function should be an array of suggestions based on the search text. A second optional constructor argument allows provision of a callback of the form string formatSuggestion(suggestion) if no value is provided, toString() is used on the suggestion objects.

Advanced Usage

AutoCompleteController

Provide a format suggestion callback

string formatSuggestion(suggestion)

Used to convert a suggestion to a string of text describing that suggestion. Default implementation just calls suggestion.toString()

Example Given suggestion results

{
  "code": "A-SUGGESTION",
  "description": "A Suggestion Result"
}

you could format suggestions by creating a controller using

new AutoCompleteController(someSearchCallback, (suggestion) => `${suggestion.code} ${suggestion.description}`);
}

// example suggestion when selected or listed would be formatted as 'A-SUGGESTION A Suggestion Result'

suggestion createSuggestion(suggestion)

Used to create suggestion objects for the autocomplete control. Default implementation adds a selectedText property (using formatSuggestion) to the suggestion which is used by the default suggestion result template (which is a replacable part described below).

The default suggestion template used by the autocomplete control uses a compose element to render a configurable/dynamic view

<!-- the replacable suggestion part -->
<template replaceable part="suggestion">
  <compose view.bind="suggestionView" view-model.bind="suggestion"></compose>
</template>

<!-- the default view template passed to suggestionView -->
<template>${selectedText}</template

where the selectedText property will be created by createSuggestion

Example

Use the code and description properties of the above suggestion results.

Create suggestions that include code and description properties:

createSuggestion(suggestion) {
  return {
    id: suggestion.id,
    code: suggestion.code,
    description: suggestion.description
  };
}

Format the autocomplete results with code in bold by replacing the suggestion part:

<autocomplete value.bind="client" controller.bind="clientAutoCompleteController">
  <template replace-part="suggestion"><strong>${suggestion.code}</strong> ${suggestion.description}</template>
</autocomplete>

If you have a common format across your application that you would like to use for suggestions in all places where the autocomplete used (and the default selectedText does not satisfy your needs) you can configure the template used by the compose in the fallback slot. This means you will not need the extra part replacement line in your markup <template replaceable part="suggestion"><strong>${suggestion.code}</strong> ${suggestion.description}</template> for every autocomplete control. This is done via plugin configuration:

export function configure(aurelia) {
  aurelia.use
    .standardConfiguration()
    .plugin('aurelia-autocomplete', config => {
      config.settings.suggestionTemplate = '<template><strong>${code}</strong> ${description}</template>'
    });

  aurelia.start().then(a => a.setRoot());
}

NOTE that the properties used by the template are not suggestion. prefixed as they are when replacing the slot content inline.