# Text field with auto complete to look up ID... again **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [November 8, 2006, 3:30am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/text-field-with-auto-complete-to-look-up-id-again/75189 "2006-11-08T03:30:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![saizai](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/f4b2a3/32.png) [@saizai](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/saizai)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2006, 3:30am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/text-field-with-auto-complete-to-look-up-id-again/75189/1 "2006-11-08T03:30:04Z")
I’m getting a bit frustrated with it. I’d like to populate a hidden field with the ID so I don’t have to find\_by\_foo\_bar afterwards (and thus take yet another database hit [oy my poor database] and risk ambiguous fields) or uglify the dropdown with an ID number. Now, this works: person.org\_name =\> “org: person” \_form.rhtml: \<%= text\_field\_with\_auto\_complete :person, :name %\> \<%= hidden\_field :association, :person\_id %\> \<--- the field I want populated \_people.rhtml: \<% for person in @people do -%\>- \<%= h person.org\_name %\> \<% end -%\> … but ONLY for clicks (and onmouseover). onselect, onkeypress, etc… do nothing, so it doesn’t work for tab or enter. And I can’t access the id from after\_update\_element 'cause the popup is no longer there to get queried and all I can access is the text field itself and the selected value (ie the result of person.org\_name rather than person.id). (Or can I? If so I don’t know how. :-/) Any help? Also, when I’m using autocomplete in a sub-sub-form the popup doesn’t show. 😕 When it’s just in a form or subform it does, though. And I can tell it’s getting called 'cause I see it on the log tail. I set position:absolute; in CSS; anything else that could do it? - Sai ---
**Author:** ![saizai](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/f4b2a3/32.png) [@saizai](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/saizai)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2006, 8:27am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/text-field-with-auto-complete-to-look-up-id-again/75189/2 "2006-11-09T08:27:45Z")
I’m not sure it’ll answer all your questions, but check out my article on the subject here… [http://blog.wolfman.com/articles/2006/10/23/getting-a-record-id-from-text\_field\_with\_auto\_complete](http://blog.wolfman.com/articles/2006/10/23/getting-a-record-id-from-text_field_with_auto_complete) I hope it helps. saizai wrote: > \<% for person in @people do -%\> > id from after\_update\_element 'cause the popup is no longer there to get > > - Sai – Jim M., [http://blog.wolfman.com](http://blog.wolfman.com) ---
**Author:** ![saizai](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/f4b2a3/32.png) [@saizai](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/saizai)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2006, 4:11pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/text-field-with-auto-complete-to-look-up-id-again/75189/3 "2006-11-09T16:11:39Z")
Jim M. wrote: > I’m not sure it’ll answer all your questions, but check out my article > on the subject here… > > [Wolfmans Howlings](http://blog.wolfman.com/articles/2006/10/23/getting-a-record-id-from-text_field_with_auto_complete) That sounds like the text field will display “23,foo,bar”. Which is rather ugly. 😕 The page you linked to just does the same thing - makes the first field ‘id’; hides it in the dropdown but it’ll be displayed as selected once something is chosen. Ugly UI. ☹ And then it uses that to populate other fields on the after-update call. But I’d like a way to reliably populate a hidden field with the hidden ‘id’ part of the popup no matter how selected, and have the text field just show the prettified name. ---
**Author:** ![saizai](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/f4b2a3/32.png) [@saizai](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/saizai)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2006, 7:14am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/text-field-with-auto-complete-to-look-up-id-again/75189/4 "2006-11-11T07:14:39Z")
Sai E. wrote: > ‘id’; hides it in the dropdown but it’ll be displayed as selected once > something is chosen. Ugly UI. ☹ And then it uses that to populate other > fields on the after-update call. > > But I’d like a way to reliably populate a hidden field with the hidden > ‘id’ part of the popup no matter how selected, and have the text field > just show the prettified name. Ok that link does hide the id, which is not the link it was meant to point to 🙂 Here is where the link should have pointed to… [http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/How+to+use+text\_field\_with\_auto\_complete/versions/67](http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/How+to+use+text_field_with_auto_complete/versions/67) about half way down, it has a nicer way to do it, but I have not tried that method. There is another method here that uses javascript to write the id into a hidden\_text field, I have used that method. [http://ricardo.pacheco.name/blog/articles/2006/09](http://ricardo.pacheco.name/blog/articles/2006/09) – Jim M., [http://blog.wolfman.com](http://blog.wolfman.com) ---
**Author:** ![saizai](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/f4b2a3/32.png) [@saizai](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/saizai)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2006, 7:22am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/text-field-with-auto-complete-to-look-up-id-again/75189/5 "2006-11-11T07:22:40Z")
FYI I updated my blog with the correct links, and added two more ways of doing I found. Jim M. wrote: > > ‘id’; hides it in the dropdown but it’ll be displayed as selected once > > Here is where the link should have pointed to… > > [http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/How+to+use+text\_field\_with\_auto\_complete/versions/67](http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/How+to+use+text_field_with_auto_complete/versions/67) > about half way down, it has a nicer way to do it, but I have not tried that method. > > There is another method here that uses javascript to write the id into a hidden\_text field, I have > used that method. > > [http://ricardo.pacheco.name/blog/articles/2006/09](http://ricardo.pacheco.name/blog/articles/2006/09) – Jim M., [http://blog.wolfman.com](http://blog.wolfman.com)