MVC jquery autocomplete with value and text field

In MVC, autocomplete with jquery is the best way to pull data from database and render according to our requirements, so in this article we will use jquery to show the auto complete text box without any ajax controls. We need a method to get the data from database, a controller method to handle the action and a jquery/javascript function to call the controller method. Note: we will use Nortwind database. Start by writing a controller method say CustomerAutoComplete which will return us list of customer Id and contact name in json format.

public ActionResult CustomerAutoComplete(string searchText)
{
    NWDataContext db = new NWDataContext();
    var customers = db.Customers.Where(x => x.ContactName.StartsWith(searchText))
            .Take(10)
            .Select(p => new { p.CustomerID, p.ContactName });

     // Return into json format
     return Json(customers, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
}

We used Linq to Sql for ease, this is what we need to fetch data from database and return result in json format to the page.

Time to adjust our HTML/rezor to type and get selected customer

<div>Customer Contact</div>
<div>
    <input type="text" id="customerContact" value=""/>
    <input type="hidden"   id="customerID"  name="customerID" />
</div>

Note we need to use two jquery js files

<script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery-1.4.4.min.js")" 
     type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery-ui.min.js")" 
     type="text/javascript"></script>

Whatever we need for autocomete, we already done, so let's check out put, whether Id and text which we selected are set or not.

Here is HTML, when we open the page

<div>
    <input id="customerContact" class="ui-autocomplete-input" type="text" 
          value="" 
          autocomplete="off" 
          role="textbox" 
          aria-autocomplete="list" 
          aria-haspopup="true">
    <input id="customerID" type="hidden" name="customerID">
</div>

Now type something in textbox and select a contact name so the output will be, i type car

<div>
  <input id="customerContact" class="ui-autocomplete-input" 
   type="text" 
   value="" 
   autocomplete="off" 
   role="textbox" 
   aria-autocomplete="list" 
   aria-haspopup="true">
  <input id="customerID" type="hidden" name="customerID" value="FRANR">
</div>

If you can see hidden field value ="FRANR" (CustomerID)

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