jQuery autocomplete in Flask
Below is working JS/jQuery and Flask code:
@app.route('/autocomplete', methods=['GET'])def autocomplete(): search = request.args.get('q') query = db_session.query(Movie.title).filter(Movie.title.like('%' + str(search) + '%')) results = [mv[0] for mv in query.all()] return jsonify(matching_results=results)HTML/jQuery:
<head><link href="//code.jquery.com/ui/1.10.2/themes/smoothness/jquery-ui.css" rel="Stylesheet"></link><script src="//code.jquery.com/jquery-2.2.0.min.js"></script><script src="//code.jquery.com/ui/1.10.2/jquery-ui.js" ></script><script type="text/javascript">$(function() { $("#autocomplete").autocomplete({ source:function(request, response) { $.getJSON("{{url_for('autocomplete')}}",{ q: request.term, // in flask, "q" will be the argument to look for using request.args }, function(data) { response(data.matching_results); // matching_results from jsonify }); }, minLength: 2, select: function(event, ui) { console.log(ui.item.value); // not in your question, but might help later } });})</script></head><body> <div> <input name="autocomplete" type="text" id="autocomplete" class="form-control input-lg"/> </div></body>A bit of explanation is in order: 'q' is your search term argument name as defined in jQuery's $.getJSON ajax call. That's passed to flask, and picked up using request.args.get. The database query is constructed from that, and a list comprehension is used to construct the results. Note that with list comprehensions you don't initialize the list, nor do you use a for+append combination; one elegant line does everything.
Next, jsonify returns the list results wrapped as a dictionary with the key matching_results holding the results list. Do not be tempted to use json.dumps to return a list to your ajax call. See here why (TL/DR: security concerns).
Note also that i've deliberately changed some variable names so you could tell what script/flask function 'sees' which variable. E.g., the ajax call doesn't see the list results, it sees matching_results. And that's inside (now javascript's) data object.
To grab the list matching_results is the key for, use the pattern in the attached script. It's messier than simply sending a list, but more secure, and eventually will allow you to do more sophisticated things on the client-side using JS/jquery.
Finally, the select option prints the user's selection to the developer console, just for reference so you can actually respond to a user's selection.
For a more complete jquery-autocomplete example see the 'Load Data with AJAX' section here.