gocept.autocomplete 0.3

AJAX autocomplete widget for z3c.form

Autocomplete widget

gocept.autocomplete provides an autocomplete widget for z3c.form. The widget is useful if you want to provide the user with a list of suggestions for a field, but still want to accept anything else that is entered, too. The UI-part of the widget is YUI AutoComplete <http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/autocomplete/>.

To use the widget, <include package=”gocept.autocomplete”> and provide a source that implements gocept.autocomplete.interfaces.ISearchableSource. This means two things, one, your source must provide a search() method so it can be queried for values (with whatever has been entered so far as the query) and two, you must always return True from the __contains__() method, so that the user is free to enter a value that is not part of the suggestions.

No further configuration is required, the widget is automatically registered for all zope.schema.IChoice fields with an ISearchableSource.

As an example, we exercise the code from gocept.autocomplete.tests.color with the testbrowser:

>>> import zope.app.testing.functional
>>> root = zope.app.testing.functional.getRootFolder()
>>> import gocept.autocomplete.tests.color
>>> house = gocept.autocomplete.tests.color.House()
>>> root['house'] = house

>>> import zope.testbrowser.testing
>>> b = zope.testbrowser.testing.Browser()
>>> b.handleErrors = False

The AutocompleteWidget is an enhanced TextWidget. Thus, in display mode, it behaves just like a TextWidget:

>>> b.open('http://localhost/house')
>>> print b.contents
<?xml...
...<span id="form-widgets-color" class="text-widget autocomplete required choice-field"></span>...

But in edit mode, it generates additional javascript code:

>>> b.addHeader('Authorization', 'Basic mgr:mgrpw')
>>> b.open('http://localhost/house')
>>> print b.contents
<?xml...
...<script src=".../autocomplete-min.js"...
...<input id="form-widgets-color"...
...<div id="form-widgets-color-container"...
...DS_XHR("http://localhost/house/@@index.html/++widget++color/@@autocomplete-search"...
...new YAHOO.widget.AutoComplete( "form-widgets-color", "form-widgets-color-container"...

The autocompletion is populated via a view registered on the widget:

>>> b.open('http://localhost/house/@@index.html/++widget++color/@@autocomplete-search')
>>> print b.contents
>>> b.open('http://localhost/house/@@index.html/++widget++color/@@autocomplete-search?q=r')
>>> print b.contents
red
ruby

But we can still enter any value we want and have it saved (there are two parts to make this work, one is that the source must always return True in its __contains__() method, and the other is that the widget uses a special TitledTokenizedTerm that uses the actual value for everything):

>>> b.open('http://localhost/house')
>>> b.getControl('Color').value = 'foo'
>>> b.getControl(name='form.buttons.apply').click()
>>> print b.contents
<?xml...
...foo...

Changes

0.3 (2010-02-26)

• Slightly different way to “estimate” the widget URL: use the form’s context, not the getContent() method: if the content is redirected using an adapter then the view might not exist there.

0.2 (2009-02-23)

• register the widget for IChoice fields with an ISearchableSource. This functionality depends on z3c.form>=r96460 (will be included in z3c.form-2.0).

• improved documentation.

0.1 (2009-02-06)

• first release

• NOTE: still missing security declarations on the autocomplete-search view. This means anyone can query the source for values.