jQuery Plugin: Tokenizing Autocomplete Text Entry

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Overview

This is a jQuery plugin to allow users to select multiple items from a predefined list, using autocompletion as they type to find each item. You may have seen a similar type of text entry when filling in the recipients field sending messages on facebook.

Features

Intuitive UI for selecting multiple items from a large list
Layout controlled fully in CSS, easily customisable
Result caching reduces server load
No images required, just the plugin’s .js file and some CSS
Handles json search data for autocompletion
Smooth animations when results load
Select items using the mouse or keyboard

Screenshots

List style

Vertical list style item selection

Facebook style item selection

Demo

A live demo of the token input is available here.

Usage

Latest documentation can be found here:

http://loopj.com/jquery-tokeninput/

Make sure you have jquery script included on your page
Include jquery.tokeninput.js on your page
Include one of the provided stylesheets, or make your own
Create a server-side script (php/rails/django anything goes) to generate the search results. The script itself can fetch data from wherever you like, for example a database or a hardcoded list, but it must take exactly one GET parameter named “q” which will contain the query string. E.g. http://www.example.com/myscript?q=query.

Make sure you script outputs JSON search results in the following format:

  [{"id":"856","name":"House"},
   {"id":"1035","name":"Desperate Housewives"},
   {"id":"1048","name":"Dollhouse"},
   {"id":"1113","name":"Full House"}
  ]

Turn text inputs into tokeninputs using jQuery and point them to your results script

  <script type="text/javascript">
      $(document).ready(function () {
          $("#my-text-input").tokenInput("/url/to/your/script/");
      });
  </script>

A list of selected item ids is created inside the original text entry, process them as usual when the form is submitted.

License

This plugin is released under a dual license. You can choose either the GPL or MIT license depending on the project you are using it in and how you wish to use it.

Quick Download

Please don’t use these links directly in your scripts, I might change their location at any time. Instead, download them and use your own local copy.

Script: https://github.com/loopj/jquery-tokeninput/raw/master/src/jquery.tokeninput.js
Facebook style CSS: https://github.com/loopj/jquery-tokeninput/raw/master/styles/token-input-facebook.css
List style CSS: https://github.com/loopj/jquery-tokeninput/raw/master/styles/token-input.css

Github Project

If you would like to contribute to this plugin, check out the github repository here: http://github.com/loopj/jquery-tokeninput

About the Author

James Smith, British entrepreneur and developer based in San Francisco.

I'm the co-founder of Bugsnag with Simon Maynard, and from 2009 to 2012 I led up the product team as CTO of Heyzap.

James Smith