jQuery autoComplete view all on click?

Question

I'm using jQuery's autocomplete in a relatively simple way:

$(document).ready(function() {
  var data = [ {text: "Choice 1"}, 
               {text: "Choice 2"}, 
               {text: "Choice 3"} ]

$("#example").autocomplete(data, {
  matchContains: true,
  minChars: 0,
  formatItem: function(item) 
    { return item.text; }
    }
  );
  });

How do I add an onclick event (like a button or a link) that will display all the available choices for the autocomplete? Basically I'm looking to make a hybrid of an autocomplete and a select/dropdown element.

Thanks!

Answer 1

You can trigger this event to show all of the options:

$("#example").autocomplete( "search", "" );

Or see the example in the link below. Looks like exactly what you want to do.

http://jqueryui.com/demos/autocomplete/#combobox

EDIT (from @cnanney)

Note: You must set minLength: 0 in your autocomplete for an empty search string to return all elements.