Autocomplete in Hyrax

Hyrax Autocomplete

Activating autocomplete on a field

The way a field is associated with a particular autocomplete data source is with a data attribute on the element. The data-autocomplete-url attribute stores a path to the data source. To add one to an existing field create a partial for the field in app/views/records/edit_fields/.

In the partial, specify the data source:

<%=
  f.input key,
  as: :multi_value,
  input_html: {
    class: 'form-control',
    data: { 'autocomplete-url' => "/authorities/search/loc/names",
      'autocomplete' => key }
  } ,
  required: f.object.required?(key) %>

If you add the attribute to your view it will be active when you visit the form.

Hyrax comes with Questioning Authority which provides some RESTful endpoints that you can use as autocomplete sources. Checkout the QA README for a list of the authorities that it comes with (you can even make your own).

Autocomplete in Hyrax currently uses jQuery UI Autocomplete. Hyrax stores the jQuery UI Autocomplete options and source in ES6 classes. Unless you need to make specific query that requires you to change the options and source, the JS will use a default query from default.es6. This should just work with the QA vocabs.

The autocomplete for the Work field requires different a different source and options so it has a different class: work.es6. After creating your own class, you will need to import it and an additional case to the autocomplete method in autocomplete.es6

Default autocomplete fields

There are some fields that come with autocomplete turned on by default. The location field uses GeoNames, but you need to provide credentials in config/hyrax.rb for it to work.

Subject & language use local vocabularies by default. You can read about how to set those up in the Questioning Authority README.

Activating a dropdown with authorities

To create your own select input with authorities you extend the QASelectService class at /app/services/hyrax/name_authorities.rb

module Hyrax
  # Provide select options for the creator field
  class NameAuthorities < QaSelectService
    def initialize
      super('names')
    end
  end
end

You initialize the service with the name of a YAML file config/authorities/names.yml that contains a list of authorities:

terms:
    - id: /authorities/search/loc/names
      term: LOC Names
      active: true
    - id: /authorities/search/assign_fast/all
      term: FAST
      active: true

Then in the partials for the input field at /app/views/records/edit_fields/_creator.html.erb:

<% name_authorities = Hyrax::NameAuthorities.new %>

<%=
  f.input key,
  as: :multi_value,
  input_html: {
    class: 'form-control',
    data: { 'autocomplete-url' => "/authorities/search/loc/names",
      'autocomplete' => key }
  } ,
  required: f.object.required?(key) %>

<%= f.input key, collection: name_authorities.select_active_options, label: false %>

Create a JS file in your app to activate the dropdown:

Blacklight.onLoad( function() {
	Hyrax.authoritySelect({ selectBox : "select#work_creator", inputField : "input.work_creator" });
});