Parse json to jquery ajax autocomplete list from Rails

Question

I never did this before, I am trying to club multiple ldap attributes to be shown for each autocomplete list item.

For example, I search "admin" as sAMAccountName in ldap, and my search function returns two values for each match. sAMAccountName and idnumber, so my list item has to include both sAMAccountName and idnumber. Rather than just sAMAccountName "admin" that was typed in the text field. How can I make jQuery read multiple attributes for each list item?

def search
  if (params[:term] =~ /[a-zA-Z]/)
    @result = User.FindLdap("sAMAccountName", params[:term])
  else
    @result = User.FindLdap("idnumber", params[:term])
  end

  respond_to do |format|
    format.json { render :json=> @result.to_json }
    format.js
  end
end

$(function() {
  $("#term").autocomplete({
    source: function (request, response) {
      $.post("/users/search", request, response);
    },
    minLength: 2,
    select: function () {}
  });
});

Answer 1

It's hard to tell what are attributes in User model but I presume they are sAMAccountName and idnumber, so here is replacement for your source method in jQuery autocomplete

source: function( request, response ) {
    $.ajax({
        url: "/users/search",
        dataType: "json",
        data: {
            term: request.term
        },
        success: function( data ) {
            // remove users in line below if JSON is not prepanded with users attribute 
            response( $.map( data.users, function( user ) {
                return {
                    // this is formated string which will be visible in autocomplete list
                    // example "123213, admin"
                    label: user.idnumber + ", " + user.sAMAccountName, 
                    value: user.idnumber
                }
            }));
        }
    });
},

The code above will convert (map) response from server to format

[ { label: "<idnumber>, <sAMAccountName>" , value: "<idnumber>" }, .....]

Don't worry jQuery autocomplete knows how to handle this array ;)