Drupal: Overriding Drupal autocompletion to pass more parameters

Posted: - Modified: | drupal, geek
Update 2014-02-19: See LittleDynamo’s comment with a link to this StackOverflow answer.
Update 2014-02-11: See Claus’ comment below for a better way to do this.

Drupal autocompletion is easy – just add #autocomplete_path to a Form API element, set it to something that returns a JSON hash, and off you go.

What if you want to pass form values into your autocompletion function so that you can filter results?

Searching, I found some pages that suggested changing the value in the hidden autocomplete field so that it would go to a different URL. However, that probably doesn’t handle the autocomplete cache. Here’s another way to do it:

Drupal.ACDB.prototype.customSearch = function (searchString) {
    searchString = searchString + "/" + $("#otherfield").val();
    return this.search(searchString);
};

Drupal.jsAC.prototype.populatePopup = function () {
  // Show popup
  if (this.popup) {
    $(this.popup).remove();
  }
  this.selected = false;
  this.popup = document.createElement('div');
  this.popup.id = 'autocomplete';
  this.popup.owner = this;
  $(this.popup).css({
    marginTop: this.input.offsetHeight +'px',
    width: (this.input.offsetWidth - 4) +'px',
    display: 'none'
  });
  $(this.input).before(this.popup);

  // Do search
  this.db.owner = this;
  if (this.input.id == 'edit-your-search-field') {
    this.db.customSearch(this.input.value);
  } else {
    this.db.search(this.input.value);
  }
}

Drupal.behaviors.rebindAutocomplete = function(context) {
    // Unbind the behaviors to prevent multiple search handlers
    $("#edit-your-search-field").unbind('keydown').unbind('keyup').unbind('blur').removeClass('autocomplete-processed');
    // Rebind autocompletion with the new code
    Drupal.behaviors.autocomplete(context);
}

You’ll need to use drupal_add_js to add misc/autocomplete.js before you add the Javascript file for your form.

Hope this helps!

2011-08-08 Mon 19:16

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