Autocompleting only the place name with Google places API

Question

I have successfully setup autocomplete of Google Places API with

var input = document.getElementById('place_name');
var autocomplete = new google.maps.places.Autocomplete(input);

But that automatically fills the textbox place_name with full address like "ABC, Some Street, Washington, WA, United States" But I want to fill the textbox with only the place name e.g. ABC in my case. How I can do that?

I tried

google.maps.event.addListener(autocomplete, 'place_changed', function () {
    var place = autocomplete.getPlace();

    $('#place_name').val(place.name);
});

but it didn't do anything. Help please...

Answer 1

I now realize I completely misinterpreted the question. I thought it was the content of the dropdown box you wanted to sanitize. To change content of the searchbox, just add

input.value=input.value.split(',')[0]; 

to your place_changed event -> http://jsfiddle.net/9RkM9/

---

This is how google maps places organizes the results (predictions) in the dropdown box :

Google does not guarantee this structure to be stable in all future, but the fact they actually document the markup structure proofs we can trust it for now.

A typical .pac-item will look like this, here searching for "Los" :

<div class="pac-item">
    <span class="pac-item-query"><span class="pac-matched">Los</span>
    Altos</span><span>CA, United States</span>
</div>

Here with CA and United States present, which you want to avoid. The task is simply to reduce the content of the .pac-item node, so we only keep the name part of the socalled prediction. The autocomplete searches each and every time the user hits a key, so you can overrule the autogenerated list of predictions on your own input keyup event. There need to be a little delay, so we actually access the newest list of predictions, not the previous one :

input.onkeyup = function(e) {
   setTimeout(function() {
      var places = document.querySelectorAll('.pac-item');      
      for (var i=0;i<places.length;i++) {
         var place = places[i];
         //get the icon
         var pac_icon = place.querySelector('.pac-icon').outerHTML;
         //get the mathed name only, including markup for precise match, loke "Los" in bold 
         var place_name_reduced = place.querySelector('.pac-item-query').outerHTML;
         place.innerHTML = pac_icon + place_name_reduced;
      }
   }, 150);
}

See it in action here -> http://jsfiddle.net/8SGvR/

Answer 2

Use address array. It has address in pieces. Just take what you need.

place.address_components

To see whats in this array, use console:

console.log(place.address_components);

For example, to update value of input

$('#place_name').val(place.address_components[0].long_name);