JavaScript::Autocomplete::Backend - Google Suggest-compatible autocompletion backend
package MyAutocompleter; use base qw(JavaScript::Autocomplete::Backend); my @NAMES = qw(alice bob charlie); sub expand { my ($self, $query) = @_; # do something to expand the query my $re = qr/^\Q$query\E/i; my @names = grep /$re/, @NAMES; (lc $query, \@names, [], [""]); } MyAutocompleter->run;
This is a base class for implementing an autocompletion server with the same protocol used by Google Suggest ( http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en ). It is basically a CGI script that takes a word to be completed as the "qu" parameter and returns a specially concoted JavaScript statement. For more efficiency it should be possible to turn it into a mod_perl handler; that is left as an exercise for the reader.
The front-end JavaScript code is discussed in http://serversideguy.blogspot.com/2004/12/google-suggest-dissected.html .
This module is used by creating a subclass, which should override the expand method, which takes care of searching for the autocompletion results.
expand
Run the whole autocompletion process in one fell swoop. Prints everything to standard output, including the HTTP headers. The arguments %args are passed to the constructor.
Create a new JavaScript::Autocomplete::Backend object. Currently the only argument is cgi, which should provide a CGI or CGI-compatible object. If none is provided, a new CGI object is created by default.
cgi
Returns the string to be expanded (which usually comes from the "qu" CGI parameter).
Returns the CGI object being used.
Get a CGI parameter. Just delegates the call to $self->cgi.
Return the HTTP headers. It just delegates to $self->cgi, but it uses the UTF-8 encoding by default.
Converts the expanded values into JavaScript, as expected by the calling frontend script. $query is a string; all the other parameters are array refs. Returns a string.
Provide the autocompleted values for the query. Returns a 4-element list: ($query, $names, $values, $prefix). $query is the query as returned to the frontend script (typically converted to lowercase). $names is an array ref of results. $values is an array ref of values that are usually shown on the right-hand side of the drop-down box in the front end; it is used by Google for the estimated result count. The purpose of $prefix is not certain at this time, but it appears that if the array is empty, the drop-down menu appears but the word in the input box itself is not completed, while if the array is not empty (for example, contains an empty string as its only element), the word in the input box is completed as well.
Convert an array ref into a JavaScript Array constructor. Returns a string. For example,
print $obj->as_array(["a", "b", "c"]); # prints 'new Array("a", "b", "c")'
Returns that message that is returned by the Google backend when the js CGI parameter is not true.
js
http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en
http://serversideguy.blogspot.com/2004/12/google-suggest-dissected.html
0.10
Ivan Tubert-Brohman <itub@cpan.org>
Copyright (c) 2004 Ivan Tubert-Brohman. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
The original JavaScript frontend code is Copyright (c) 2004 Google, Inc. Use it at your own risk or write or find a free version.
To install JavaScript::Autocomplete::Backend, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.
cpanm
cpanm JavaScript::Autocomplete::Backend
CPAN shell
perl -MCPAN -e shell install JavaScript::Autocomplete::Backend
For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.