how to select a object from a collection using text in rails form

Question

I want a text input to select the given options in my rails form.

f.collection_select(:user_id, User.all, :id, :name)

is the closest to what I want, but there are too many users to show as a dropdown.

I've tried rails-jquery-autocomplete, and I've written ajax to insert search results to the view before, but it all seems too much and verbose in 2019 just to convert a select box to a text input. If there is a best practice for filtering the given object collection in a rails form, I would like to know. Thank you.

Answer 1

I guess chosen js library might be a good option to consider and there is also a rails wrapper gem available for this (https://github.com/tsechingho/chosen-rails)

Include the gem in your gemfile and run bundle install

gem 'chosen-rails'

Include the following to application.js

//= require chosen-jquery

Include the following to application.scss

*= require chosen 

Example usage:

Once the setup is complete you can use it as follows

<%= select_tag :users, options_for_select(User.all),class:"form- 
control",multiple:true id:chosen-select" %>

And initialise it in java script as follows

$('#chosen-select').chosen();

You can refer to various options library provides in their official page (https://harvesthq.github.io/chosen/) and customise it to your use case.