Creating a Rightmove/Zoopla'esque Predictive search box? *WEB DESIGN*

[mas]

Hi,

Currently in the process of building a website for an estate agency.

I am a fairly competant designer however I do not have much experience with Java/Ajax etc etc... I'm trying to create a kind of predictive search box such as the one on Rightmove... so when people go to type say "Gre...." It will have a drop down which will match it to "Great Yarmouth" if that makes sense? Probably best to visit the Rightmove site for a better idea.

How complicated is this to achieve?

Thanks for any help
Sam

 

[mas]

I'm guessing complicated then. LOL.

 

[KDF]

Not complicated at all, just use AJAX and PHP or some other language, initiate the ajax using javascript to trigger the update when someone has typed over a certain number of characters.. then use full text searching of a SQL database and return the results via the AJAX request. That's providing your website has a sql backend for content of course.



If you are clever you can use things like 'sounds like' to eliminate some spelling errors etc and have SQL score the results so the most 'relevant' items are at the top and limit the returned results to the top 3 for example.

There are even pre-written ajax classes for you for free on the web.. prototype springs to mind.

 

[mas]

To me, that sounds bloody complicated. LOL.

I guess I'm more of a designer, than a coder. Is this something you could do for me? Payments involved obvs.

 

[KDF]

Has the website already been created ? was it database driven. It really should be build from the ground up to take full advantage of type ahead style searching.

If you were only interested in returning results for properties then you would only need to put that data into a database like MSSQL, mySQL etc.

 

[Olli3]

jQuery already has "autocomplete" functionality you can use...

http://jqueryui.com/demos/autocomplete/#remote-jsonp

You'll need to create a JSONP service in addition to the above.

If you have no experience of JavaScript, jQuery, JSON/JSONP, Web Services, REST then your gonna need to do some reading

 

[Adam]

Sam, ask Jay if he will do it?

 

[Mitchell]

If you want an auto-completing search bar type thing, this may be useful to you?... http://harvesthq.github.com/chosen/

 

[mas]

Has the website already been created ? was it database driven. It really should be build from the ground up to take full advantage of type ahead style searching.

If you were only interested in returning results for properties then you would only need to put that data into a database like MSSQL, mySQL etc.

Hi Mate,

It is in the process of being created now, as of this minute the search field is just empty. Once designed, the site will go off to my software provider and they do all the mySQL stuff... that's too complicated for me. So, they will sort out the actual results.... I just want to create the predictive area typing...

Will have a look at the Github, jQuery options when im back home.

 

[mas]

Sam, ask Jay if he will do it?

Ahh yeah, didnt think of that. Shavers only.

 

[Adam]

lol... re up