JSON format for jquery-select2 multi with ajax

Johann Echavarria picture Johann Echavarria · May 17, 2013 · Viewed 44.3k times · Source

I'm thinking in moving from Chosen to Select2 because Select2 has native methods for ajax. Ajax is critical because usualy you have to load a lot of data.

I executed sucessfully the example with the JSON of api.rottentomatoes.com/api/

I did a JSON file to test the ajax, but it didn't works.

I don't know how the JSON should be. It seems that there is no detailed documentation:

https://github.com/ivaynberg/select2/issues/920

I tried unsucessfully several JSON formats, so I tried to copy a JSON format similar to api.rottentomatoes but it doesn't works.

I may be missing something stupid.

function MultiAjaxAutoComplete(element, url) {
    $(element).select2({
        placeholder: "Search for a movie",
        minimumInputLength: 1,
        multiple: true,
        ajax: {
            url: url,
            dataType: 'jsonp',
            data: function(term, page) {

                return {
                    q: term,
                    page_limit: 10,
                    apikey: "z4vbb4bjmgsb7dy33kvux3ea" //my own apikey
                };
            },
            results: function(data, page) {
                return {
                    results: data.movies
                };
            }
        },
        formatResult: formatResult,
        formatSelection: formatSelection,
        /*initSelection: function(element, callback) {
            var data = [];
            $(element.val().split(",")).each(function(i) {
                var item = this.split(':');
                data.push({
                    id: item[0],
                    title: item[1]
                });
            });
            //$(element).val('');
            callback(data);
        }*/
    });
};

function formatResult(node) {
    return '<div>' + node.id + '</div>';
};

function formatSelection(node) {
    return node.id;
};


/*MultiAjaxAutoComplete('#e6', 'http://api.rottentomatoes.com/api/public/v1.0/movies.json');*/

MultiAjaxAutoComplete('#e6', 'https://raw.github.com/katio/Quick-i18n/master/test.json');

$('#save').click(function() {
    alert($('#e6').val());
});

I did this jsfiddle:

http://jsfiddle.net/Katio/H9RZm/4/

Answer

igor.vaynberg picture igor.vaynberg · May 17, 2013

If you switched to JSON make sure you switch dataType to JSON from JSONP.

The format is specified here: http://ivaynberg.github.io/select2/#doc-query

The JSON should look like this:

{results: [choice1, choice2, ...], more: true/false }

Basically the only required attribute in the choice is the id. if the option contains other child options (such as in case of optgroup-like choices) then those are specified inside the children attribute.

The default choice and selection renderer expect a text attribute in every choice - that's what is used to render the choice.

so a complete example of a US state using default renderer might look like this:

{
    "results": [
        {
            "id": "CA",
            "text": "California"
        },
        {
            "id": "CO",
            "text": "Colarado"
        }
    ],
    "more": false
}

Hope this gets you started.