WordPress has a jQuery auto suggest plugin included in /wp-includes/js/jquery/ It’s called suggest.js and you can read more about how to use it here: http://www.vulgarisoip.com/2007/06/29/jquerysuggest-an-alternative-jquery-based-autocomplete-library/
You can wp_enqueue_script(‘suggest’) to load it in the header. More on that here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/wp_enqueue_script
Thanks for the tip. I took a look at those pages, and understand how to load the script with wp_enqueue, but not sure exactly how to insert code so that it imports pre-existing comments from the WP database into the drop-down suggestions area. Here is the code from my template’s comments page. Is is where I should put the script’s commands? Please tell me how to modify if you can. Thanks!
<p>Reply <textarea name=”comment” id=”comment” cols=”45″ rows=”10″ tabindex=”4″></textarea></p>
You’re going to have to use some css and create a php file that outputs something like this: http://www.vulgarisoip.com/files/search.phps
There is also some CSS that you’ll need to append to your stylesheet.
http://www.vulgarisoip.com/files/jquery.suggest.css only with your data.
The JS is referenced on the link I mentioned in my first post. I imagine you’re would look something like this:
jQuery(function() {
jQuery("#comment").suggest("yourcustomscript.php");
});
I grasp how to implement the JS and CSS, but am still a little confused how to code the output xyz.php file. I don’t want to manually create results like the list of birds as shown in the example, but rather to have the list of results generated from the respective Post ID’s comments_content in WP database.
Right. You’ll need to make a script that does the following and poin the jQuery at it:
- Connects to the WP DB
- Queries the table for the data you want
- Convert the result set into an associative array (or pull it from the DB as one)
- Create a function similar to the example given on the other site using your array’s name.
Thanks again. I’ve tried without success to figure out the code used in the PHP query to generate the results from the database. In the example PHP query/output file, the bird names appear in a list within PHP tags (i.e. “Great Bittern”=>”Botaurus stellaris”,
“Little Grebe”=>”Tachybaptus ruficollis”, etc) but I can’t figure the code used to generate the array/list from the database. Here’s what I have so far. Am I on the right track?
<?php
$q=$_GET[“q”];
$con = mysql_connect(‘localhost’, ‘user’, ‘password’);
if (!$con)
{
die(‘Could not connect: ‘ . mysql_error());
}
mysql_select_db(“db_name”, $con);
$sql=”SELECT * FROM user WHERE id = ‘”.$q.”‘”;
$result = mysql_query($sql);
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
//I’m lost at this point
$q = strtolower($_REQUEST[“q”]);
if (!$q) return;
$items = array();
foreach ($items as $key=>$value) {
if (strpos(strtolower($key), $q) !== false) {
echo “$key\n”;
}
}
mysql_close($con);
?>
Thanks again. I’ve tried without success to figure out the code used in the PHP query to generate the results from the database. In the example PHP query/output file, the bird names appear in a list within PHP tags (i.e. “Great Bittern”=>”Botaurus stellaris”,
“Little Grebe”=>”Tachybaptus ruficollis”, etc) but I can’t figure the code used to generate the array/list from the database. Here’s what I have so far. Am I on the right track?
<?php
$q=$_GET["q"];
$con = mysql_connect('localhost', 'user', 'password');
if (!$con)
{
die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());
}
mysql_select_db("db_name", $con);
$sql="SELECT * FROM user WHERE id = '".$q."'";
$result = mysql_query($sql);
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
//I'm lost at this point
$q = strtolower($_REQUEST["q"]);
if (!$q) return;
$items = array();
foreach ($items as $key=>$value) {
if (strpos(strtolower($key), $q) !== false) {
echo "$key\n";
}
}
mysql_close($con);
?>
I made a plugin with the same functionality called autocompleter, you can search it in the plugin library. Well it’s not based on the default suggest.js of jQuery, but it uses a jquery library too.
You may take a look on it at Autocompleter
