Searchbox

Demonstration: zkoss-demo/zksearchbox-demo
Java API: org.zkoss.zkmax.zul.Searchbox
JavaScript API: zkmax.inp.Searchbox

since 9.0

Employment/Purpose

A dropdown list that allows users to search and select items. Since it contains a separate search field (unlike Combobox), it can avoid end-users from inputting a non-existed item.

Example

<zscript>
ListModel model = new ListModelArray(new String[] {
  "North America", "South America", "Europe", "Asia", "Africa", "Oceania", "Antarctica"
});
</zscript>
<searchbox model="${model}" placeholder="An unknown place" autoclose="true">
   <template name="model">
       <html><![CDATA[
       <i class="z-icon-globe"></i> ${each}
       ]]></html>
   </template>
</searchbox>

UP or DOWN to pop up the list if being focused.
ESC to close the list.
UP, DOWN, HOME, END, PAGE UP and PAGE DOWN to change the selection of the item from the list.
ENTER to confirm the change of selection.
since 9.5 DELETE or BACKSPACE to clear the selection.

Properties

Autoclose

Default: false

Sets whether to automatically close the list if a user selects any item. It means even if the user selects an item, the list still remains open. You might want to set it as true in single selection mode (multiple=false).

Disabled

Sets whether it is disabled. A list can still be opened programmatically by calling open() even if the component is in the disabled state.

ItemConverter

By implementing your own org.zkoss.util.Converter using the org.zkoss.util.Converter interface, you can generate the label that represents the selected items. The default implementation is joining all the toString() result of items by commas.

Can accept a Class name as a string, in which case an instance of that class will be created automatically, or an object already instantiated.

    <searchbox model="${model}" itemConverter="foo.bar.MyConverter" />
    <searchbox model="${model}" itemConverter="${myConverterObject}" />

Model

Since this component doesn’t accept any child, you must specify a model object.

Search at Client-side

If you assign a ListModel, it renders all data to a browser and searches the matched items in JavaScript.

Search at Server-side

When a org.zkoss.zul.ListSubModel is provided, not all items are rendered to the client initially. Instead, as a user types into the search input, the entered text is sent to the server where it is used to filter the ListSubModel and retrieve only the subset of items that match the search term. The default String-based filtering uses startsWith() for a simple prefix-match search.

Multiple

Sets whether multiple selections are allowed.

If you assign a model object to a searchbox, you should enable multiple selections with ListModel API, e.g. model.setMultiple(true). Please do not set multiple on searchbox directly. You should set multiple on the model instead.

List Items = new ArrayList();
for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++) {
    Items.add("data "+i);
}
ListModelList model = new ListModelList(Items);
model.setMultiple(true);

Open

Drops down or closes the list of items.

Placeholder

Sets the placeholder text that is displayed when there’s nothing selected.

SearchMessage

Sets the placeholder message of the search text field. The default is “Type to search”.

SelectedItem

Returns the selected item, or null if no item is selected. When multiple is true, it returns the first of the selected items.

Don’t use MVVM annotations in both selectedItem and selectedItems at the same time since @save selectedItem will deselect all of the currently selected items first.

SelectedItems

Returns all selected items.

Custom Item Rendering

Since this component has no child component like Listbox, if you want to render its items differently, there 2 ways:

Change text

If you just want to change the text e.g. enclosing it with brackets, just put

      <>  
              <template name="model">[${each}]</template>  
      </>

The template only allows text that can be converted into a ZK Label.

Change HTML Structure

If you want to make more changes e.g. adding tooltips by setting title attributes, you need to create your own ItemRenderer. See ZK_Developer’s_Reference/mvc/View/Renderer/Item_Renderer.

Supported Events

Name	Event Type
`onAfterRender`	Event: [org.zkoss.zk.ui.event.Event](https://www.zkoss.org/javadoc/latest/zk/org/zkoss/zk/ui/event/Event.html)
`onSelect`	Event: [org.zkoss.zk.ui.event.SelectEvent](https://www.zkoss.org/javadoc/latest/zk/org/zkoss/zk/ui/event/SelectEvent.html) Represents an event caused by the user that the list selection is changed at the client.
`onOpen`	Event: [org.zkoss.zk.ui.event.OpenEvent](https://www.zkoss.org/javadoc/latest/zk/org/zkoss/zk/ui/event/OpenEvent.html) Denotes that the user has opened or closed a component. Note: unlike `onClose`, this event is only a notification. The client sends this event after opening or closing the component.
`onSearching`	Event: [org.zkoss.zk.ui.event.InputEvent](https://www.zkoss.org/javadoc/latest/zk/org/zkoss/zk/ui/event/InputEvent.html) Notifies one that the user is searching by keywords.

Inherited Supported Events: HtmlBasedComponent

Supported Children

* none

Version History

Version	Date	Content
9.0.0	September 2019	ZK-4380: Provide a Searchbox component
9.5.0	August 2020	ZK-4497: searchbox: improve clearing selection, key shortcut / clear icon

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