Remote data loading from SQL with Selectize.js

Question

As you will notice, I am a data scientist and not a programmer / developper.

In SQL, I have a database with ten-thousands of names. I managed to implement the selectize.js tool in my twitter bootstrap website, but it loads way to slow. On the help page from Selectize.js, https://github.com/brianreavis/selectize.js/blob/master/docs/usage.md, I read that it is possible to load options on the fly when the user enters something.

But from the examples I can not find out how to do this from an SQL table. Can somebody write in pseudo code what I would have to do?

In short, when the user types some names, I want the script to go find in the SQL table these names and make select html tags, rather than downloading everyname already at the beginning.

This is the code I have at the moment:

            <div class="control-group">
                <select id="select-yourself" class="demo-default" placeholder="Type your name...">
                    <option value="">Type your name ...</option>
                        <?php
                            for($row = 0; $row < sizeof($race_table); $row++){
                            echo("<option value=".$row.">".
                            $race_table[$row]['Name']."</option>");
                        }
                        ?>
                </select>
            </div>
            <script>
            $('#select-yourself').selectize({
                create: false,
                maxOptions: 100,
                //sortField: {
                    //field: 'text',
                    //direction: 'asc'
                //},
                dropdownParent: 'body'
            });

Answer 1

You could try something like:

HTML:

<div class="control-group">
  <select id="select-yourself" class="demo-default" placeholder="Type your name...">
    <option value="">Type your name ...</option>
  </select>
</div>

JavaScript:

$('#select-yourself').selectize({
  valueField: 'name',
  labelField: 'name',
  searchField: 'name',
  options: [],
  create: false,
  load: function(query, callback) {
    if (!query.length) return callback();
    $.ajax({
      url: 'http://127.0.0.1:8080/getnames.php',
      type: 'GET',
      dataType: 'json',
      data: {
        name: query,
      },
      error: function() {
        callback();
      },
      success: function(res) {
        callback(res);
      }
    });
  }
});

PHP file (getnames.php) is used only to create json file from mysql database data:

<?php
// parameters from URL
$urlparam_name = $_GET['name'] ."%";

// connect to the database
include("mysql.inc");
$link = mysqli_connect($host, $user, $pass, $db) or die("Error " .mysqli_error($link));

$sql = "
SELECT `race_table`.`name`
FROM `race_table`
WHERE `race_table`.`name` like '$urlparam_name'
GROUP BY `race_table`.`name` ASC
";

$result = mysqli_query($link, $sql) or die("Error " .mysqli_error($link));
$rows = array();
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result))
{
    extract($row);
    $rows[] = "{ \"name\": \"$name\" }";
}

// output to the browser
header('Content-Type: text/javascript; charset=UTF-8');
echo "[\n" .join(",\n", $rows) ."\n]";
?>