jQuery UI Autocomplete: Tell It My 'Label' and 'Value'

Question

Is there a way to tell jQuery UI Autocomplete which JSON array indexes to use as the 'label' and 'value' when those aren't the index names used in the JSON array?

The aray containing my lookup values looks like this (as logged by Firebug):

[ Object { id="12", name="Don Davis" }, Object { id="17", name="Stan Smith" } ]

I want to use 'id' as the 'label' and 'name' as the 'value' but can't figure out how to tell the config object.

My array is contained in a local variable -- there's no Ajax call being made.

This response to another question solves the problem by creating a hidden form input, but it seems likely that there's a cleaner way of handling this.

Answer 1

From reading the Jquery UI docs you can try something like this:

<script>
    $(function() {
var projects = [ { id: "12",value: "Don Davis" }, { id: "17", value:"Stan Smith" } ]

    $( "#project" ).autocomplete({
        minLength: 0,
        source: projects,
        focus: function( event, ui ) {
            $( "#project" ).val( ui.item.value);
            return false;
        },
        select: function( event, ui ) {
            $( "#project" ).val( ui.item.value);
            $( "#project-id" ).val( ui.item.id);

            return false;
        },
        search: function(event, ui) { console.log(event); console.log(ui) }
    })
    .data( "autocomplete" )._renderItem = function( ul, item ) {
        return $( "<li></li>" )
            .data( "item.autocomplete", item )
            .append( "<a>" + item.value+"</a>" )
            .appendTo( ul );
    };
});​
    </script>