Auto filling a textfield from keypress

sledgeweb

One feature I like about GMAIL, is the way it pops up a box as you type an email address during composition. The box displays both NAME and EMAIL ADDRESS matches to what you have typed so far, with the found text bolded. See this pic for an example:

If you look at the page source in GMAIL, you'll see a bunch of scripting language that I'm not familiar with. Is this some kind of custom scripting language?

How could you recreate this effect in PHP or some other method? That is, how could you pop up a box that showed matches for what a user had typed into a field. This thing works in real time, so, as you type, the box repopulates. This would be very helpful in forms where repetive information is entered, but a drop down box isn't really practicle.

Any ideas?

SpanKie

Javascript ...

You can store a list of users recent sent email addy's and then generate a balloon or similar with that data.

sledgeweb

Well, in this case, the information is pulled from the address book. For my use, I'd be using it to auto fill repetive fields in an entry form. So, I don't think the javascript idea of keeping track of the last few entries works because when the user closes the browser or goes to a different page, that info is lost if you don't store it. Additionally, you are only going to keep track of a limited number of data entries that way, whereas the GMAIL example pulls from your address book, no matter how long it is.

SpanKie

well from the looks of it, Gmail is using javascript.

What the site appears to be doing is reading the users address book, building an array in JS and using events. (Just guessing)

You can in theory do that same. With PHP read information from a database (or where ever you like) build a JS array from it. Using onChange events, etc ... perform this same thing...

Reguardless, you will need to use a client side scripting language .. as PHP alone will not do this.