AutoFill Search Function improvement

I was testing the AutoComplete Search function out and I thought I would share an idea on how to improve the functionality of the dynamic choices.

From my understanding, currently the dynamic choices of the AutoComplete Search are treated as Data Types. This poses a particular problem when working with Repeating Groups. For example:

I want to create a search result (using a Repeating Group) for businesses that contains the word “wing.” Suppose I have two businesses called “Wing Stop” and “Wing Zone.” Now suppose I set the dynamic choices of AutoFill Search to Business Accounts, and the search field as Business Name. I also set the Data source for the search results as Business Accounts.

When I try to set the constraint of the data source for my search results, I cannot set it to contain the search value “wing.” I am forced to set it to contain the search value’s Business Name. Hence, my search results cannot include both the businesses.

Another issue I find is that if two businesses have the same name, say “Wing Stop.” Then “Wing Stop” appears twice on the autofill list. I find this potentially very bad if you have multiple (say 1000) entries of a field be the same, like the name “John.”

Improvement Idea

I love that Bubble has the AutoComplete Search and that we can actually affect the autofill choices. However, it would be great if the search results can be populated based on the “search value” rather than an autofill value. I’m not sure how you guys at Bubble will do that but I’m positive you can figure it out in no time. You guys are geniuses!

Almost, the autofill choices should not have any duplicates.

Let me know your thoughts, guys! Thanks!

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Can you share a page with some real data where we can see the limitation. Not sure I’m following the difference between search value and autofill value, so it’d be easier with a real situation.

Sorry, I’m not sure how to share a page but below are a couple of pictures to describe what I mean when I cannot fill out a repeating group with simply the “search value” of an AutocompleteDropDown.

In this scenario, I have set the AutocompleteDropDown to have a dynamic choices of Deals, where the “field to search” is “Name.” Refer to the first picture please.

I set my Repeating Group to be dynamic choices of deals. When I try to set the constraint to “Name = AutocompleteDropDown’s value,” i get an error. I have to set it to “Name = AutocompleteDropDown’s value’s Name.” See the second picture.

Suppose I have several deals with the name “Deal 1” and several deals with the name “Deal 2.” During testing, when I try to search for the value “1,” I cannot, meaning my repeating group does not feel up with all deals with the name “Deal 1.” I am forced to search for “Deal 1” for all the those deals to show up. Also, note that “Deal 1” shows multiple times as autofill options. It would be better to have only one “Deal 1” shown as an autofill option. See picture 3.

I hope this better explains what I am trying to suggest. I can see where the AutoComplete search function is useful in its current state. However, it would be very wonderful if there is a similar function where the autofill options are unique and we can search by a simple text value rather than being constrained by the autofill options.

Thanks for reading my long posts!! :slightly_smiling:

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I have also sent feedback on this recently since I have similar style (a filter field above a repeating group) at http://bubble.is/cpa

it would be nice if the AutoComplete box was also returning a list of the matching items that you could bind to the repeating group. That way as you typed it would show only matches in the repeating group

would love to use autocomplete instead since it hints on what more you can type in the filter (it is not useful only for selecting a single item that is)

now I use the contains function and a simple textbox and I also have the issue that “contains” only does per-word matching, not per substring:
Contains filter only searches for words (haven’t gotten a reply on that one)

Will try to help as far as I can here, there are a couple of threads so will keep to this one.

You can pull text out of the Autofill Search. What you need to remember is that Autocomplete returns a thing, not a text, but you can get to the underlying data value quite easily.

So here I am searching for Contact Name on Location, and then I can search for every occurrence.

As long as I have a “Bob” I can pull back all the Bobs as well as Billy Bob.

The issue of multiple returns is fixable by simply creating an index when you create the location, and it only has unique Contact Names.

That still doesn’t quite get you to where I think you want to be …

So this would bring back any reference to Sue, whereas it will only do either Mary Sue or Bobby Sue.

This is tricky, but I would think you could do it with Blockspring. There is a text function that splits text into words separated by spaces. You could run something periodically that created you an index of individual words.

That could work.

Displaying and picking out “Sue” from “Suelin” as well as Sue/Mary Sue etc would be a lot harder via this method.

For that I think you would have to find another way without the type ahead. You could use a regular input and on “data has changed” do a search and send this to the repeating group, so the group changed as you typed ?

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Nigel,

Thank you for your input. I agree that an index would fix the issue of non-unique autocomplete options. I could simply create an index data type and fill it with unique names and use that as my autofill options list.

And I agree if I used a regular input function, I could fill my repeating group with “Mary Sue” and “Bobby Sue” but simply searching for “Sue”.

I’m actually not concerned with having a search function that would return “Mary Sue” and “Bobby Sue” if I searched for a partial word like “Su.” I do not believe search engines in general parse strings in their search algorithm… at least not yet?

In essence, I think it would be very useful if we had a search function that works JUST like the existing input function… but it has an autocomplete experience with unique autocomplete options. I hope that finally explains what I’m looking for? haha.

Thank you.

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Hello All,

Is there any update on this?

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