Auto Complete Fields in Rails that Display Something Different Than What They Select

Question

Hi, I'm trying to create an auto complete field (using the script.aculo.us plugin) in a form for a category select, but I want the auto complete list to display a number next to each category (the number of other things in the same category). This is similar to the Tags field on stack overflow.

Right now I can display the number I want, but when I select any field the extra number gets dumped into the text field with the category. Currently I'm simply appending the number to each item on the array before I display it. How can I make it so when you select something from the list the number (enclosed in parentheses) does not get put into the text field. Thank you.

Answer 1

I finally solved my problem, I just needed to figure out what some of the plugin's options were. It turns out there is an option for the auto_complete_field helper called :select. The value you provide to this tells the JavaScript which part of the <li> element (the HTML tags the results are displayed in) to return to the text box.

The solution was a simple matter of enclosing the name of the category in a span with a special class and leaving the number part I didn't want outside of this class. This was easy since I was already using my own partial to display the results.