Angularjs autocomplete from $http

Question

I'm trying to write an autocomplete directive that fetches data from the server using an $http request (without using any external plugins or scripts). Currently it works only with static data. Now, I know that I need to insert my $http request into the source: of the directive, but I can't find any good documentation on the subject.

http request

$http.post($scope.url, { "command": "list category() names"}). 
            success(function(data, status) {
                $scope.status = status;
                $scope.names = data;    
            })
            .
            error(function(data, status) {
                $scope.data = data || "Request failed";
                $scope.status = status;   
            });

Directive

app.directive('autoComplete', function($timeout) {
    return function(scope, iElement, iAttrs) {
            iElement.autocomplete({
                source: scope[iAttrs.uiItems],
                select: function() {
                    $timeout(function() {
                      iElement.trigger('input');
                    }, 0);
                }
            });
        };
    });

View

<input auto-complete ui-items="names" ng-init="manualcat='no category entered'" ng-model="manualcat"> 

So, how do I piece this all together correctly the Angular way?

Answer 1

I made an autocomplete directive and uploaded it to GitHub. It should also be able to handle data from an HTTP-Request.

Here's the demo: http://justgoscha.github.io/allmighty-autocomplete/ And here the documentation and repository: https://github.com/JustGoscha/allmighty-autocomplete

So basically you have to return a promise when you want to get data from an HTTP request, that gets resolved when the data is loaded. Therefore you have to inject the $qservice/directive/controller where you issue your HTTP Request.

Example:

function getMyHttpData(){
  var deferred = $q.defer();
  $http.jsonp(request).success(function(data){
    // the promise gets resolved with the data from HTTP
    deferred.resolve(data);
  });
  // return the promise
  return deferred.promise;
}

I hope this helps.