AJAX Live Search
AJAX Live Search is a jQuery plugin / PHP search form that searches and displays the result as you type similar to Google Autocomplete feature.
Demo
Browser Support
IE 8+ ā | Chrome ā | Firefox ā | Opera ā | Safari ā |
Thanks to BrowserStack and JetBrains for supporting this project.
Getting started with Ajax Live Search
Getting the current example in index.php
to work including creating a dummy database and a table should not take longer than 7 minutes. But it will take more in case you need to integrate it in an existing project. To achieve that assuming you have this text field:
<input type="text" class='mySearch' id="ls_query" placeholder="Type to start searching ...">
-
Copy the folders including
core
,css
,font
,img
,js
andtemplates
to your project. -
Specify the required configurations specially database configurations in
core/Config.template.php
and rename the file toConfig.php
. This file contains all the back-end settings for the plugin that have been explained in PHP Configs table. -
Include
js/ajaxlivesearch.min.js
orjs/ajaxlivesearch.js
andcss/ajaxlivesearch.min.css
orcss/ajaxlivesearch.css
in your page. -
Change the URL for
Access-Control-Allow-Origin header
incore/AjaxProcessor.php
to your project URL. Currently it ishttps://ajaxlivesearch.com
. -
Make sure
core/Handler.php
andcore/Config.php
are included in your (PHP) page and you have these lines at the very top of the file (Checkindex.php
):use AjaxLiveSearch\core\Config; use AjaxLiveSearch\core\Handler; if (session_id() == '') { session_start(); } $handler = new Handler(); $handler->getJavascriptAntiBot();
-
Lastly, hook the plugin to the text field and pass the required options (loaded_at & token):
jQuery("#ls_query").ajaxlivesearch({ loaded_at: , token: getToken() . "'"; ?>, max_input: , }); ```
You can also post additional parameters to the server if you need. To achieve this you should add data
attributes to the search input:
<input type="text" class='mySearch' id="ls_query" placeholder="Type to start searching ..." data-additionalData="hello world!">
For example, in this case you can access the data attribute in PHP like this:
// key is transformed to lowercase $additionalData = $_POST['additionaldata'];
jQuery Options
Name | Type | Required | Description |
---|---|---|---|
loaded_at | Integer | Yes | This is used to prevent bots from searching. |
token | String | Yes | This is used to prevent CSRF attack. |
url | String | No | Default: ajax/process_livesearch.php. |
cache | Boolean | No | This refers to Ajax request caching. Default: false |
form_anti_bot | String | No | Default: ajaxlivesearch_guard |
slide_speed | String | No | Default: fast |
type_delay | Integer | No | Default: 350 |
max_input | Integer | No | Default: 20 |
min_chars_to_search | Integer | No | Minimum characters length to start searching. Default: 0 |
page_ranges | Array | No | Default: [0, 5, 10] |
page_range_default | Integer | No | Default: 5 |
form_anti_bot_class | String | No | Default: ls_anti_bot |
footer_class | String | No | Default: ls_result_footer |
next_page_class | String | No | Default: ls_next_page |
previous_page_class | String | No | Default: ls_previous_page |
page_limit | String | No | Default: page_limit |
result_wrapper_class | String | No | Default: ls_result_div |
result_class | String | No | Default: ls_result_main |
container_class | String | No | Default: ls_container |
pagination_class | String | No | Default: pagination |
form_class | String | No | Default: search |
loaded_at_class | String | No | Default: ls_page_loaded_at |
token_class | String | No | Default: ls_token |
current_page_hidden_class | String | No | Default: ls_current_page |
current_page_lbl_class | String | No | Default: ls_current_page_lbl |
last_page_lbl_class | String | No | Default: ls_last_page_lbl |
total_page_lbl_class | String | No | Default: ls_last_page_lbl |
page_range_class | String | No | Default: ls_items_per_page |
navigation_class | String | No | Default: navigation |
arrow_class | String | No | Default: arrow |
Custom Event
Name |
---|
onResultClick |
onResultEnter |
onAjaxComplete |
Example:
jQuery(".mySearch").ajaxlivesearch({ loaded_at: <?php echo time(); ?>, token: <?php echo "'" . $handler->getToken() . "'"; ?>, max_input: <?php echo Config::getConfig('maxInputLength'); ?>, onResultClick: function(e, data) { // get the index 1 (second column) value var selectedOne = jQuery(data.selected).find('td').eq('1').text(); // set the input value jQuery('#ls_query').val(selectedOne); // hide the result jQuery("#ls_query").trigger('ajaxlivesearch:hide_result'); }, onResultEnter: function(e, data) { // do whatever you want // jQuery("#ls_query").trigger('ajaxlivesearch:search', {query: 'test'}); }, onAjaxComplete: function(e, data) { } });
Custom Trigger
Name |
---|
ajaxlivesearch:hide_result |
ajaxlivesearch:search |
PHP Configurations
Name | Type | Required | Description | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
dataSources | Array | Yes | Data source for each search text field. Keys are refering to the field HTML id. Currently MySQL and mongoDB (this is in beta) are supported. MySQL data source configs:
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
antiBot | String | Yes | This is used as a security technique to prevent form submissions from those bots that do not use JavaScript. In this technique, a hidden field is populated using jQuery with this value. It can have any value, but it MUST be the same as `form_anti_bot` option passed to the jQuery plugin. By default it is set to `ajaxlivesearch_guard`. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
searchStartTimeOffset | Integer | Yes | This is used for another security technique against bots. Some bots immediately submit a form once the page is finished loading. However, for human beings it takes more time to fill a field. By default this parameter is set to 3 seconds. Assigning more than 3 seconds is not recommended. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
maxInputLength | Integer | Yes | This specifies the maximum length of characters in search field. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
template | String | Yes | This specifies the template name located in templates folder |
FAQ
-
What is the risk in disabling anti_bot and token?
form_anti_bot
is a nice security feature to have but it should be fine to remove it. To achieve this you need to changevalidateRequest()
incore/AjaxProcessor.php
and remove$_POST['ls_anti_bot']
as well as changingverifySessionValue($sessionParameter, $sessionValue)
incore/Handler.php
. In contrast, removing thetoken
allows anyone to create a form and use your server as the data source and therefore it is not recommended. Currently, each time the page / search form is loaded a new token is generated by callinggetToken()
in the form page (index.php
in the current example). Then the token and anti_bot are checked usingverifySessionValue($sessionParameter, $sessionValue)
upon searching / sending a new request to the server. If this looks an overkill to you, ingetToken()
return the same token for the existing session. -
How a column can be hidden in the result?
This can be achieved in your template. An example can be found in
templates/hiddenColumn.php