Starting point for implementation of key field

[dovrosenberg]

I post this not as a proposed robust solution, but rather as a starting point for further work. I've implemented a simple version of a "key" field in the autocomplete.

What it does:

• Allows a "key" attribute in the settings which specifies a key field in the collection
• Whenever an item is selected in the list, there is a 'key' property added to the input which contains the key value that matches the selected item
• As you type in the input, the key is cleared to ensure it only exists if an item in the collection was selected
• The template can then have an "initialKey" parameter passed in, and the matching item from the collection will be pre-populated into the input

Where it falls down (among other places, I'm sure):

• I've hardcoded the selection to tie to rules[0]... worked for my use case, but obviously not a good solution
• I haven't fully thought through how this should work for any scenario other than whole-field replacement

Just figured I'd share since I made it this far...

[mizzao]

I don't quite understand what the key field is supposed to be doing, but can you first make sure the code builds first? The Travis CI build seems to fail in the coffeescript compile step.

[dovrosenberg]

Sorry - a versioning issue. Now builds.

The idea is that many times when you're doing a lookup you are going to connect the record selected to another one via a foreign key sort of relationship. So, this enables you to 1) easily get the foreign key for the item selected in the autocomplete and 2) prepopulate the autocomplete for a specified key value (useful when editing a record with an existing value).

[mizzao]

I still don't understand the idea behind the key. Maybe you can provide an example app that uses this idea?

However, I do agree you should not edit code with tabs instead of spaces. Spaces are pretty much standard in web development now.

[dovrosenberg]

I'll I'll keep working on trying to get it to build. It's working fine locally, so I'm not sure what's going on...

Will work on a quick sample as well, to try to better explain.