How can I add jquery ui autocomplete to a dynamically created element?

Eric Belair picture Eric Belair · Jul 12, 2011 · Viewed 29.4k times · Source

I'm trying to get jQueryUI AutoComplete to trigger on dynamically created form input elements, but it's not working. I've tried using keyup.autocomplete and keydown.autocomplete as bind events in $.live(), but it's binding to the new elements - only those already on the page.

Try out the code here (try typing "ava" in the first input, then click "Add an Input" and type the same in the new input).

JavaScript:

$(function() {
    $("input#addButton").click(function() {
        $("input.searchInput:last").clone(true).appendTo($(this).closest("form"));
        $("input.searchInput:last").val("");

    })

    $("input.searchInput").live("keydown.autocomplete", function() {
        $(this).autocomplete({
            source: [
                "ActionScript",
                "AppleScript",
                "Asp",
                "BASIC",
                "C",
                "C++",
                "Clojure",
                "COBOL",
                "ColdFusion",
                "Erlang",
                "Fortran",
                "Groovy",
                "Haskell",
                "Java",
                "JavaScript",
                "Lisp",
                "Perl",
                "PHP",
                "Python",
                "Ruby",
                "Scala",
                "Scheme"
                ],

            minLength: 2
        });
    })
});

HTML:

<form name="myForm" method="post">
    <input id="addButton" name="addButton" type="button" value="Add an input" />
    <input name="search" value="" class="searchInput" maxlength="20" />
</form>

Answer

Andrei picture Andrei · Aug 4, 2014

Function .live() is deprecated now.

Looks like code like this works:

var options = {
    source: ["ActionScript", "AppleScript"],
    minLength: 2
};
var selector = 'input.searchInput';
$(document).on('keydown.autocomplete', selector, function() {
    $(this).autocomplete(options);
});