Is it possible to add autocomplete as one of the parameter choices? I know Drupal ships with user_name and taxonomy_term as autocomplete fields, how difficult it is for Forena to tap into this functionality?

Thanks!

BTW, I work for a Public Higher Edu Institution, and the reports I wrote using Forena have been viewed by thousands of people on campus. I am about to release a student focused report, which will then generate tens of thousands of clicks. We have teams that use SSRS, Oracle BI Suite, Argos, etc. None of them beats the flexibility that Drupal + Forena offers. Forena is Awesome!

Comments

metzlerd’s picture

metzlerd CreditAttribution: metzlerd commented

Thanks for the positive feedback. An interesting coincidence as I also work for a public higher ed institution.

The thing that has held me back on this feature is twofold. The first is that i would think that for it to be performative, the data block used to create the autocomplete should filter based on the data typed in, but how would you expect to write that block? Should all data blocks use the same parameter for filtering? What should that be?

The second is the limited utility of the autocomplete. It can only return the keys, and those get displayed to the user in the text box. Reports would have to filter on term name instead of term id, for example, or else display the selected value as term id.

It might help me if you thought through the configuration and sample data blocks for how you would expect this feature to behave and post them here. That is tell me how you would expect to configure the parameters screen and what the data block for the data source field might look like as an example.

hpang’s picture

hpang CreditAttribution: hpang commented

You are right. The limitation is high, and probably not worth pursuing. I can always throw a list out, parse it into JSON format, and use jQuery UI autocomplete. It is actually not hard to do at all.

hpang’s picture

hpang CreditAttribution: hpang commented
Issue summary: View changes

Revise

abarpetia’s picture

abarpetia CreditAttribution: abarpetia as a volunteer commented
Version: 7.x-3.x-dev » 7.x-4.x-dev
Issue summary: View changes

I have on select with reference parameter but this list is very long. So, would like to have autocomplete field instead of big drop down.

Is there any possibility to have this?

@hpang, I am not experienced with JSON format so, will really appreciate if you share your workaround?

metzlerd’s picture

metzlerd CreditAttribution: metzlerd commented

What we typically do is break down the list into two select lists. The first select (using ajax) can limit the display on the second second select. I still haven't really figured out a way to get around the comment #1. Autocompletes are notoriously difficult to get working well. They are really meant for free text fields, choices aren't limited to the options you provide, etc.

abarpetia’s picture

abarpetia CreditAttribution: abarpetia as a volunteer commented

I don't have any dependency among list items so can't break them down into two select lists.

Agreed with your #1, it will be difficult to implement them for key value scenarios. I might try to look for some other ways to implement this.