Horsey

Progressive and customizable autocomplete component

Browser support includes every sane browser and IE7+.

Demo!

You can see a live demo here.

Inspiration

I needed a fast, easy to use, and reliable autocomplete library. The ones I stumbled upon were too bloated, too opinionated, or provided an unfriendly human experience.

The goal is to produce a framework-agnostic autocomplete that is easily integrated into your favorite MVC framework, that doesn't translate into a significant addition to your codebase, and that's enjoyable to work with. Horsey shares the modular design philosophy of Rome, the datetime picker. Furthermore, it plays well with Insignia, the tag editor component, and pretty much any other well-delimited component out there.

Features

• Small and focused
• Natural keyboard navigation
• Progressively enhanced
• Extensive browser support
• Fuzzy searching
• Supports <input> and <textarea> elements

Install

You can get it on npm.

npm install horsey --save

Or bower, too.

bower install horsey --save

Options

Entry point is horsey(el, options). Configuration options are detailed below. This method returns a small API into the horsey autocomplete list instance. You can also find existing horsey instances using horsey.find.

predictNextSearch(info)

Runs when a tag is inserted. The returned string is used to pre-fill the text input. Useful to avoid repetitive user input. The suggestion list can be used to choose a prefix based on the previous list of suggestions.

• info.input contains the user input at the time a suggestion was selected
• info.suggestions contains the list of suggestions at the time a suggestion was selected
• info.selection contains the suggestion selected by the user

cache

Can be an object that will be used to store queries and suggestions. You can provide a cache.duration as well, which defaults to one day and is specified in seconds. The cache.duration is used to figure out whether cache entries are fresh or stale. You can disable autocomplete caching by setting cache to false.

limit

Can be a number that determines the maximum amount of suggestions shown in the autocomplete list.

filter(query, suggestion)

By default suggestions are filtered using the fuzzysearch algorithm. You can change that and use your own filter algorithm instead.

source

A source(data, done) should be set to a function. The done(err, items) function should provide the items for the provided data.input.

• data.input is a query for which suggestions should be provided
• data.limit is the previously specified options.limit
• data.previousSelection is the last suggestion selected by the user
• data.previousSuggestions is the last list of suggestions provided to the user

The expected schema for the items object result is outlined below.

[category1, category2, category3]

Each category is expected to follow the next schema. The id is optional, all category objects without an id will be treated as if their id was 'default'. Note that categories under the same id will be merged together when displaying the autocomplete suggestions.

{
  id: 'here is some category',
  list: [item1, item2, item3]
}

blankSearch

When this option is set to true, the source(data, done) function will be called even when the input string is empty.

noMatches

Defaults to null. Set to a string if you want to display an informational message when no suggestions match the provided input string. Note that this message won't be displayed when input is empty even if blankSearch is turned on.

debounce

The minimum amount of milliseconds that should ellapse between two different calls to source. Useful to allow users to type text without firing dozens of queries. Defaults to 300.

highlighter

If set to false, autocomplete suggestions won't be highlighted based on user input.

highlightCompleteWords

If set to false, autocomplete suggestions won't be highlighted as whole words first. The highlighter will be faster but the UX won't be as close to user expectations.

renderItem

By default, items are rendered using the text for a suggestion. You can customize this behavior by setting autocomplete.renderItem to a function that receives li, suggestion parameters. The li is a DOM element and the suggestion is its data object.

renderCategory

By default, categories are rendered using just their data.title. You can customize this behavior by setting autocomplete.renderCategory to a function that receives div, data parameters. The div is a DOM element and the data is the full category data object, including the list of suggestions. After you customize the div, the list of suggestions for the category will be appended to div.

API

Once you've instantiated a horsey, you can do a few more things with it.

.clear()

You can however, remove every single suggestion from the autocomplete, wiping the slate clean. Contrary to .destroy(), .clear() won't leave the horsey instance useless, and calling .add will turn it back online in no time.

.source

Exposes the suggestions that have been added so far to the autocomplete list. Includes suggestions that may not be shown due to filtering. This should be treated as a read-only list.

.show()

Shows the autocomplete list.

.hide()

Hides the autocomplete list.

.toggle()

Shows or hides the autocomplete list.

.refreshPosition()

Updates the position of the autocomplete list relative to the position of the el. Only necessary when the el is moved.

.destroy()

Unbind horsey-related events from the el, remove the autocomplete list. It's like horsey was never here.

.retarget(target)

Detaches this horsey instance from el, removing events and whatnot, and then attaches the instance to target. Note that horsey.find will still only work with el. This method is mostly for internal purposes, but it's also useful if you're developing a text editor with multiple modes (particularly if it switches between a <textarea> and a content-editable <div>).

.anchor

The anchor value that was originally passed into horse as options.anchor.

.defaultRenderer

The default render method

.defaultGetText

The default getText method

.defaultGetValue

The default getValue method

.defaultSetter

The default set method

.defaultFilter

The default filter method

.appendText

Method called whenever we have an anchor and we need to append a suggestion to an input field. Defaults to defaultAppendText.

.appendHTML

Method called whenever we have an anchor and we need to append a suggestion for a contentEditable element. Unsupported by default. Provided by banksy.

.defaultAppendText

Default appendText implementation

.filterAnchoredText

Method called whenever we have an anchor and we need to filter a suggestion for an input field.

.filterAnchoredHTML

Method called whenever we have an anchor and we need to filter a suggestion for a contentEditable element. Unsupported by default. Provided by banksy.

Events

Once you've instantiated a horsey, some propietary synthetic events will be emitted on the provided el.

Name	Description
horsey-show	Fired whenever the autocomplete list is displayed
horsey-hide	Fired whenever the autocomplete list is hidden
horsey-filter	Fired whenever the autocomplete list is about to be filtered. Useful to prime the filter method

Usage with woofmark

See banksy to integrate horsey into woofmark.

License

MIT