From Jquery-ui autocomplete to typeahead.js

Question

I am migrating my app to twitter-bootstrap and i would like to replace my jquery-ui autocomplete with typeahead.js.

It would be better to use the feature embedded in twitter-bootstrap but i am ok with the extra typeahead plugin if necessary.

My problem is that i have trouble reproducing the current behaviour especially with the absence of results.

How would you do something like that?

$("#search").autocomplete({
           source : myUrl,
            delay : 100,
            minLength : 2,
            select : function(event, ui) {
              // do whatever i want with the selected item
            },

            response : function(event, ui) {
                if (ui.content.length === 0) {
                    ui.content.push({
                        label : "No result",
                        value : customValue
                    });
                }
            }
        });

Basically, if there is no result, i want to display a custom message in the component.

Thanks!

Answer 1

The migration to Bootstrap typeahead would look something like..

$('.typeahead').typeahead({
  minLength:2,
  updater: function (item) {
     /* do whatever you want with the selected item */

    },
  source: function (typeahead, query) {
     /* put your ajax call here..
     return $.get('/typeahead', { query: query }, function (data) {
        return typeahead.process(data);
     });
     */      
    }
});

EDIT:

I've updated the demo to include a sorter and highlighter. I think this will get you the results you want..

  sorter: function(items) {
    if (items.length == 0) {
        var noResult = new Object();
        items.push(noResult);
    }
    return items;    
    },
  highlighter: function(item) {
    if (dataSource.indexOf(item) == -1) {
        return "<span>No Match Found.</span>";
    }
    else {
       return "<span>"+item+"</span>";
    }
  },

Bootstrap Typeahead Demo

I don't think the typeahead has an equivalent to delay, but there are some jquery workarounds for this.

Answer 2

With the latest version of Typeahead.js (0.10) it is now possible to specify an empty template to display when no results are found.

   $('.typeahead').typeahead({
     hint: true,
     highlight: true,
     minLength: 2
    },{
      name: 'examples',
      source: examples.ttAdapter(),
      templates: {
        empty: [
          '<div class="empty-message">',
          'unable to find any results that match the current query',
          '</div>'
        ].join('\n')
      }
    });