jQuery Autocomplete: how to refresh list?

Question

I have a form with a variable number of autocomplete fields that use the same select list. These fields are added and removed as needed. Whenever a parameter on the page is changed, I (try to) update the list for all the fields by first calling unbind() then autocomplete() with a new parameter added to the url.

$('input.foo').unbind().autocomplete(url?new_param=bar);

The problem is that unbind() does not seem to be unbinding. When I type in the input field, it fires off the entire history of autocomplete events.

I also tried flushCache to no avail.

How do I clear out the old events?

Thanks.

Answer 1

The autocomplete plugin adds a function called unautocomplete() to remove autocomplete() from fields that have it, so it should work if change your code to:

$('input.foo').unautocomplete().autocomplete('url?new_param=bar');

This unautocomplete() function should remove all of the old events.

Answer 2

Try this

$ ('input.foo').unbind('.autocomplete').autocomplete ('url?new_param=bar') ;

Answer 3

I think your problem is that you don't have a form enclosing the autocomplete input field. If you look in the code of jquery.autocomplete.js it does $(input.form).unbind(".autocomplete"); on unautocomplete(), which means the input must live inside a form tag in order to work.

Answer 4

jQuery provides flushCache() method (http://docs.jquery.com/Plugins/Autocomplete) to remove the contents already matched through auto-complete.

For example, if the html element used is <input type="text" id="txtElement"/> and auto-complete is associated with it. The flushCache can be given as follows: $("#txtElement").flushCache(); and this would solve the problem.