Quick Spot

Quickspot is a fast, flexible JSON powered in-memory search.

This Quickspot is free to use and licensed under the MIT license.

Quick start

1. Download a copy of quickspot.js
2. Include quickspot.js in to your web page.
3. call quickspot.attach({"url":"<path_to_JSON>", "target":"<id_of_searchbox>"});

Alternately;

• to install using NPM run npm install quick-spot
• to install using Bower run bower install quick-spot

Quickspot is tested to have full support for Chrome, Firefox, Safari and IE9+.
IE7 and IE8 also work although the custom events are unsupported.

Basic configuration

Quickspot is designed to quickly perform an in-memory search on an array of JSON objects. By default it assumes the title of each item will be in an attribute called name. (See: option.key_value if this is not the case.)

At minimum both target and either data or url must be provided to the quickspot attach method.

If a JSON object has a "url" attribute quick-spot will attempt to redirect to that URL when the result is clicked. If no URL attribute is found quick spot will instead simply populate the attached search box with the value it has found (similar to a type-ahead). If you would like to do something more clever here, please refer to option.click_handler.

• option.target - The target option should either be the DOM node, or the ID of the DOM node, for the search box you would like quickspot to attach a search to. (Can also be a callback)
• option.url - The url option can be used to provide the path to the JSON file containing the information you wish to search on.
• option.data -The data option can be used to pass a JSON directly in to the attach method.

Advanced configuration

QuickSpot implements a number of advanced methods which can be used to further customise how quick-spot functions.

• option.key_value - Use this to specify the name of the primary attribute in the objects. For example name/title. Results matching this value will be ranked higher. By default quickspot assumes this attribute is called "name". For more complex objects dot notation can be used to reference a nested value, ie. attributes.name.
• option.display_name - If you would like search results to show a value other than what is contained in key_value (normally "name") set this attribute here. (dot notation is supported)
• options.search_on - Array of attributes in the JSON data set to search on (Quickspot will search on all attributes in an object if this is not provided). (dot notation is supported)
• disable_occurrence_weighting - If set to true, multiple occurrences of the search string in a result, will no longer increase its ranking in the results.
• options.safeload - If set to false, Quickspot will attempt to attach instantly, rather than waiting for document load event to fire.
• options.hide_on_blur - Hide results listing on blur (true by default)
• options.results_container - ID or Node of element quickspot should use as container for results (by default will use quick-spot elements parent)
• options.prevent_headers - Don't add custom headers such as X-Requested-With (Can be used to avoid an options requests being made to the data API)
• options.auto_highlight - Automatically attempt to highlight search text in result items. (true|false - default false)
• options.max_results - Maximum results to display at any one time (applied after searching/ordering, results after the cut off will not be rendered. 0 = show unlimited results)
• options.css_class_prefix - Set custom class name prefix for quickspot. By default "quickspot" will be used.
• options.allow_partial_matches - Filter results by individual words rather than by the full phrase. This is enabled by default. (true|false)
• options.show_all_on_blank_search - True|false - Rather than hiding when no search terms are entered, this will instead cause quickspot to list all valid results (results that are not filtered out). False by default.
• options.events - Quick method of binding up events. Takes an object of event name, callback pairs.

In addition you can also extend quickspots base functionality significantly through the use of the following callbacks.

• options.display_handler(current_item_data, quickspot_instance) - Callback to override how search items are displayed.
• options.click_handler(clicked_item_data, quickspot_instance) - Callback is called whenever an item is clicked/activated.
• options.gen_score(item_data, search_text) - Callback to override scoring mechanism. (The higher the number number returned, the higher in results order this item will be)
• options.no_results(quickspot_instance, search_text) - Markup to render if no results are found. (Defaults to false. If set to false, this does nothing)
• options.no_results_click(search_text, quickspot_instance) - Callback to handle what happens when a user attempts to click/hit enter when no results have been found.
• options.data_pre_parse(raw_data_set, quickspot_options) - Callback allows preprocessing of data before its set in to quickspot's data store. Can be used to rearrange data to work with quick-spot if needed.
• options.parse_results(search_results, quickspot_options) - Manipulate the result array before render.
• options.string_filter(string) - parse string for quickspot searching (Default will make string lower case, and remove punctuation characters)
• options.no_search_handler(searchbox_dom_element, quickspot_instance) - Callback is run whenever the search box becomes empty
• options.screenreader_result_text(item_data result_idx, quickspot_instance) - callback to override how text describing a result for screen-readers is generated
• options.hide_results(results_container, quickspot_instance) - Callback to override method that hides results container
• options.show_results(results_container, quickspot_instance) - Callback to override method that shows results container
• options.loaded(datastore) - Callback is fired each time a data store has been loaded
• options.ready(quickspot_instance) - Callback fired when quick-spot is fully up & running
• options.error(http_status, http_text) - Callback fired on AJAX failure
• options.default_sort - Callback is run after any blank search or call to datastore.store.all(). Function is given the results array to be sorted. You may mutate the array given or provide a return value to set the final results.
• options.results_header - Header for results container (can be Node/ID/raw html or callback returning one of the previous)
• options.results_footer - Footer for results container (can be Node/ID/raw html or callback returning one of the previous)

Along with the standard events, quickspot will also fire the following additional events on the input it is attached to.

• quickspot:start - Fired each time a quickspot search is triggered.
• quickspot:end - Fired each time a quickspot search completes.
• quickspot:showresults - whenever result container is displayed
• quickspot:hideresults - whenever results container is hidden
• quickspot:activate - Fired whenever a quickspot item is invoked
• quickspot:select - Fired whenever a result in quickspot is selected
• quickspot:result - Fired whenever a quickspot displays some results
• quickspot:noresults - Fired whenever a quickspot search finds no results.
• quickspot:resultsfound - Fired whenever a quickspot search returns results.
• quickspot:ready - Fired when quickspot is fully loaded
• quickspot:loaded - Fired whenever a new datastore is attached & ready
• quickspot:init - Fired the first time quickspot loads its datastore

A few additional options can be accessed via setting certain attributes on the search data object. These can either be set within callbacks, or as part of the initial data set.

• qs_result_class - When set, the class name stored in the attribute will be used as a class on the rendered result's anchor element.
• qs_screenreader_text - Sets text to be read by screenreader for this result
• __searchvalues and __keyvalue - By setting both these values, quickspot will assume all data has already been "processed" in to valid quickspot search objects. If only one is set, quickspot will overwrite these values via its normal pre-processing mechanism. Please ensure the string_filter returns the same formatting.

Finally, quickspot also exposes a number of methods on the created instance.

• qs.on(event, callback) - Helper for quickly attaching events to quickspot
• qs.filter(filter_value) - Filter data set, applies to all searches on datastore
• qs.filter(filter_value, attribute) - Apply dataset filter to a single attribute.
• qs.clearFilters() - Removes all currently attached filters from datastore
• qs.showResults() - Show results container
• qs.hideResults() - Hide results container
• qs.setDatastore(newDatastore) - Set a new datastore. Datastores can be created via quickspot.datastore({url: "bla"});
• qs.refresh() - Refresh current search results (use when updating a datastore)
• qs.datastore - provides access to the datastore object itself.
• qs.showAll(unfiltered, custom_sort, prevent_autofocus) - Display all possible values in results. (unfiltered = ignore any applied filters, custom_sort = custom sort method if wanted, prevent_autofocus will prevent search box being auto focused when this is called)

Additional data stores can be created using:

quickspot.datastore({url: "url"});

This will return a quickspot datastore container, within it a datastore will be created as store once it has been initialized. Use options.loaded(ds) to add a callback to listen for this. The quickspot datastore container can also be added directly to the setDatastore method on quickspot. Options are the same as for quickspot.

The datastore object itself offers the following methods.

• ds.fill(data) - Replace datastore content with new data.
• ds.empty() - Clear all data from datastore.
• ds.add(item) - Add item to current datastore data set.
• ds.find(term, column) - Limit results to those containing a given search term. This can be limited to a single column if provided.
• ds.sort_results_by(method_or_term) - Sort filtered results by method or by closest match to provided term.
• ds.search(term) - Filter & sort results by given term
• ds.all(filtered, method_or_term) - Return all data (filtered = whether to include filtered data in results). Sort term or method can also be provided.
• ds.filter(filter, column) - Filter searchable data set. filter can be method of value to filter on. Col can also optionally be provided.
• ds.clear_filters() - Removes all filters from searchable data set.
• ds.get() - Get current results.

Troubleshooting

Circular references If you are using quickspot with a data store that includes circular reference (ie. an object that references itself), you will need to ensure you are setting search_on with specific columns. Currently quickspot has no mechanism to avoid circular reference and will get stuck in an infinite loop when attempting to parse the values from these unless the search_on columns are set.