taxonomy autocomplete example

After a lot of struggling and looking at the brilliant developers, I solved something I hope will help you:

First you have to use a MENU_CALLBACK:
<%
function yourmodule_menu() {
$items = array();
//a url to let the autocomplete function to run
$items['search/yourmodule-autocomplete'] = array(
'page callback' => 'tax_autocomplete_taxonomy',
'type' => MENU_CALLBACK,
);
return $items;
}
?>
This will trigg the tax_autocomplete_taxonomy() function.
Be aware that you have to visit admin -> build -> module to rebuild the menu. If not, the system will not recognize the url.
<%
function yourmodule_form() {
$form['yourmodule_autocomplete'] = array(
'#type' => 'textfield',
'#title' => t('Find your element'),
'#size' => 15,
'#autocomplete_path' => 'search/yourmodule-autocomplete',
);
$form['submit'] = array(
'#id' => 'yourmodule_autocomplete_submit',
'#type' => 'submit',
'#value' => t('Search'),
);
return $form;
}
?>
This part construct the form and point to the url so the autocomplete will be run.
So then you have to fetch the data from the database:
<%
// Returns an autocomplete list for search keywords.
function tax_autocomplete_taxonomy($string = '') {
$matches = array();
// If the user has started typing something...
if ($string) {
// Pull up relevant results from the database. Here you might want to extend the SQL (doble %% after the searching word to show the suggestions when you start to write)
$result = db_query_range("SELECT fieldname FROM {yourtable} WHERE LOWER(fieldname) LIKE LOWER('%s%%') ORDER BY fieldname DESC", $string, 0, 10);
while ($data = db_fetch_object($result)) {
//$data is the row and you have to convert the data to a HTML-safe string
$matches[$data->fieldname] = check_plain($data->fieldname);
}
}
// Print out the matches in the format expected by autocomplete.js. Send the result to javascript by json.
drupal_json($matches);
}
?>
And then at last you migth use the function:
yourmodule_form_submit() to make something happen after you have clicked the button:

function yourmodule_form_submit($form, &$form_state) {
	$keyword = '';
	// Get the keyword based on the form.
	$keyword = trim($form_state['values']['yourmodule_autocomplete']);
//more code here...
}