Style jQuery autocomplete in a Bootstrap input field

Question

I have implemented a jQuery autocomplete function to a Bootstrap input. The jQuery autocomplete is working fine but I want to see the results as a combo and I guess it's now happening because I'm using BootStrap.

This is the field that I'm assigning autocomplete:

<div class="form-group">
  <label>Employee</label>
  <input class="form-control" name="txtEmployee" placeholder="Trabajador">
</div>

$(this).autocomplete({

  source: function(request, response) {
    $.ajax({
      url: '@Url.Content("~/Employee/SearchEmployee")/',
      type: 'POST',
      contentType: 'application/json',
      dataType: "json",
      data: JSON.stringify({
          employerId: 1,
          searchStr: me.val()
      }),
      success: function(data) {
        if (data.success) {

          response($.map(data.data, function(item) {

            return {
              label: "(" + item.EmployeeNumber + ") " + 
                           item.FirstName + " " + 
                           item.MothersLast + ", " + 
                           item.FathersLast,
              employeeId: item.EmployeeId
            }
          }));
        } 
      }
    });
  },
  minLength: 3
});

The results are displayed but like this:

How can I style the results with Bootstrap so I can see them like dropdownlist?

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28285813/style-jquery-autocomplete-in-a-bootstrap-input-field

Answer 1

If you're using jQuery-UI, you must include the jQuery UI CSS package, otherwise the UI components don't know how to be styled.

If you don't like the jQuery UI styles, then you'll have to recreate all the styles it would have otherwise applied.

Here's an example and some possible fixes.

Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example (i.e. broken)

Here's a demo in Stack Snippets without jquery-ui.css (doesn't work)

$(function() {
  var availableTags = [
    "ActionScript", "AppleScript", "Asp", "BASIC", "C", "C++",
    "Clojure", "COBOL", "ColdFusion", "Erlang", "Fortran",
    "Groovy", "Haskell", "Java", "JavaScript", "Lisp", "Perl",
    "PHP", "Python", "Ruby", "Scala", "Scheme"
  ];
  
  $(".autocomplete").autocomplete({
    source: availableTags
  });
});

<link href="//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/twitter-bootstrap/3.3.2/css/bootstrap.css" rel="stylesheet"/>

<script src="//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.3/jquery.js"></script>
<script src="//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.11.2/jquery-ui.js"></script>
<script src="//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/twitter-bootstrap/3.3.2/js/bootstrap.js"></script>

<div class="container">

  <div class="form-group">
    <label>Languages</label>
    <input class="form-control autocomplete" placeholder="Enter A" />
  </div>
  
  <div class="form-group">
    <label >Another Field</label>
    <input class="form-control">
  </div>

</div>