Autocomplete phone and date inputs with jQuery plugin or vanilla JavaScript
In today's digital world, forms are an essential part of any website or application. They allow users to input data and interact with the website in a more personalized way. However, filling out forms can sometimes be tedious and time-consuming, especially when it comes to entering phone numbers and dates. Fortunately, there are tools and techniques available to make this process easier and more efficient.
One such tool is the use of an autocomplete feature for phone and date inputs. Autocomplete is a feature that suggests possible entries based on what the user has already typed in. It saves the user time and effort by reducing the number of keystrokes needed to complete the input. In this article, we will discuss how to implement autocomplete for phone and date inputs using a jQuery plugin or vanilla JavaScript.
jQuery is a popular JavaScript library that simplifies the process of creating interactive and dynamic web pages. It provides a variety of useful functions and plugins that can be easily integrated into websites. One of these plugins is the jQuery UI Autocomplete plugin, which allows developers to add autocomplete functionality to any input field.
To use the jQuery UI Autocomplete plugin, we first need to include the jQuery library and the jQuery UI library in our HTML file. We can do this by adding the following code in the <head> section of our HTML document:
```
<script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.5.1.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://code.jquery.com/ui/1.12.1/jquery-ui.min.js"></script>
```
Next, we need to create an input field for the phone number or date and assign it an id. For example:
```
<input type="text" id="phone">
```
Then, we can use the jQuery UI Autocomplete plugin to enable autocomplete for this input field. We do this by calling the `autocomplete()` method on our input element and passing in an array of possible values to be suggested. For phone numbers, we can use a list of country codes as the suggestions. For dates, we can use a list of common date formats. Here's an example:
```
$("#phone").autocomplete({
source: ["+1", "+44", "+33", "+39", "+86", "+81", "+65", "+91", "+55"]
});
```
Now, when a user starts typing in the phone input field, a dropdown menu will appear with the suggested country codes. The user can then select the appropriate code, and it will be automatically added to the input field.
Similarly, we can use the same approach for date inputs. For example:
```
<input type="text" id="date">
$("#date").autocomplete({
source: ["MM/DD/YYYY", "DD/MM/YYYY", "MM-DD-YYYY", "DD-MM-YYYY"]
});
```
In this case, the user will be presented with a list of common date formats to choose from, making it easier to input the date accurately.
But what if we don't want to use a jQuery plugin and prefer to use vanilla JavaScript? In that case, we can still achieve the same result by using the `datalist` element in HTML5. The `datalist` element allows us to specify a list of options for an input field. Here's an example:
```
<input type="text" id="phone" list="country-codes">
<datalist id="country-codes">
<option value="+1">
<option value="+44">
<option value="+33">
<option value="+39">
<option value="+86">
<option value="+81">
<option value="+65">
<option value="+91">
<option value="+55">
</datalist>
```
As you can see, we have created a list of options for the phone input field inside the `datalist` element. The `list` attribute on the input field refers to the `id` of the `datalist` element. When the user starts typing in the input field, the available options will be displayed, and the user can select one of them.
For date inputs, we can use the same approach. Here's an example:
```
<input type="text" id="date" list="date-formats">
<datalist id="date-formats">
<option value="MM/DD/YYYY">
<option value="DD/MM/YYYY">
<option value="MM-DD-YYYY">
<option value="DD-MM-YYYY">
</datalist>
```
Using the `datalist` element, we can achieve autocomplete functionality without using any third-party libraries or plugins.
In conclusion, autocomplete for phone and date inputs is a useful feature that can improve the user experience and make form filling more efficient. It can be easily implemented using the jQuery UI Autocomplete plugin or the `datalist` element in HTML
