Configuring a suggest box

Creating or configuring forms > Configuring the <components> element > Configuring a suggest box

6.1.14 Configuring a suggest box

A suggest box is a text box or text area that displays a preconfigured set of selections that match the user's input. Suggest boxes are useful when there are too many choices to present to the user—so many that a select box would be unreasonable. It is also appropriate when the user can use an arbitrary string, but you want helpful suggestions to be available.

To add/delete/modify a suggest box

Open the appropriate XML file located in the Viewpoint home directory. Locate the <components> element.
Create the <component> with a unique id.
Insert the <suggest-box> element.
Select whether to create a static suggest box in which all suggestions are determined when the page is loaded, or a dynamic suggest box in which the logic to determine the suggestions is executed on an external script.

Inferred values incorporate well with suggest boxes. If you are using an inferred value script, have the script return the <suggest-box> root element and all its children.

Create a static suggest box by inserting the <suggestion> element for each suggestion.

Viewpoint uses its built-in intelligence engine to determine how many options are sent to the client when the form is created. If there are too many suggestions to send to the client, Viewpoint caches the suggestions on the server and passes more to the client when necessary.

<component id="manager-names" required="false">
  <description>Select Team Lead</description>
  <suggest-box>
    <suggestion>Kelly Michaelis</suggestion>
    <suggestion>Larry Craig</suggestion>
    <suggestion>Elliott Johnson</suggestion>
    <suggestion>Harrison Carodine</suggestion>
    <suggestion>Bradley Kadanson</suggestion>
  </suggest-box>
</component>

Create a dynamic suggest box by setting the <suggest-box> dynamic attribute to "true" and the source to "exec". Insert the <url> child element’s value attribute to the location of the script.
```
<component id="dynamic-names" required="false">
  <description>Dynamic</description>
  <suggest-box dynamic="true" source="exec">
    <url value="file:///home/user/tools/suggestions.pl" />
  </suggest-box>
</component>
```
The script outputs suggestions based on submitted outputs. The single argument to the script is the value of the current text. If "Jane" is submitted as input, it gets passed to suggestions.pl.