Getting started with React AutoComplete component

22 Oct 2021 / 4 minutes to read

This section explains how to create a simple AutoComplete component and configure its available functionalities in React.

Dependencies

The following list of dependencies are required to use the AutoComplete component in your application.

|-- @syncfusion/ej2-react-dropdowns
|-- @syncfusion/ej2-dropdowns
    |-- @syncfusion/ej2-base
    |-- @syncfusion/ej2-data
    |-- @syncfusion/ej2-lists
    |-- @syncfusion/ej2-inputs
    |-- @syncfusion/ej2-navigations
    |-- @syncfusion/ej2-popups
        |-- @syncfusion/ej2-buttons
|-- @syncfusion/ej2-react-base

Installation and configuration

You can use Create-react-app to setup the applications. To install create-react-app run the following command.

npm install -g create-react-app

Start a new project using create-react-app command as follows

create-react-app quickstart --scripts-version=react-scripts-ts

cd quickstart

Adding syncfusion packages

All the available Essential JS 2 packages are published in npmjs.com public registry. You can choose the component that you want to install.

To install AutoComplete component, use the following command

npm install @syncfusion/ej2-react-dropdowns --save

Adding AutoComplete component

Now, you can start adding AutoComplete component in the application. For getting started, add the AutoComplete component in src/App.tsx file using following code.

Add the below code in the src/App.tsx to initialize the AutoComplete.

import { AutoCompleteComponent } from '@syncfusion/ej2-react-dropdowns';
import * as React from 'react';
import * as ReactDOM from "react-dom";

export default class App extends React.Component<{}, {}> {
  public render() {
    return (
       // specifies the tag for render the AutoComplete component
      <AutoCompleteComponent id='atcelement'></AutoCompleteComponent>
    );
  }
}

ReactDOM.render(<App />, document.getElementById('sample'));

Adding CSS reference

Import the AutoComplete component required CSS references as follows in src/App.css.

/* import the AutoComplete dependency styles */

@import "../node_modules/@syncfusion/ej2-base/styles/material.css";
@import "../node_modules/@syncfusion/ej2-react-inputs/styles/material.css";
@import "../node_modules/@syncfusion/ej2-react-dropdowns/styles/material.css";

Binding data source

After initialization, populate the data using dataSource property. Here, an array of string values is passed to the AutoComplete component.

import { AutoCompleteComponent } from '@syncfusion/ej2-react-dropdowns';
import * as React from 'react';
import * as ReactDOM from 'react-dom';

export default class App extends React.Component<{}, {}> {
  // define the array of data
  private sportsData: string[] = ['Badminton', 'Basketball', 'Cricket', 'Football', 'Golf', 'Gymnastics', 'Hockey', 'Rugby', 'Snooker', 'Tennis'];
  public render() {
    return (
        // specifies the tag for render the AutoComplete component
      <AutoCompleteComponent id="atcelement" dataSource={this.sportsData} />
    );
  }
}
ReactDOM.render(<App />, document.getElementById('sample'));

Run the application

After completing the configuration required to render a basic AutoComplete, run the following command to display the output in your default browser.

npm start

Source

Preview

index.tsx

index.html

import { AutoCompleteComponent } from '@syncfusion/ej2-react-dropdowns';
import * as React from 'react';
import * as ReactDOM from 'react-dom';

export default class App extends React.Component<{}, {}> {
  // define the array of data
  private sportsData: string[] = ['Badminton', 'Basketball', 'Cricket', 'Football', 'Golf', 'Gymnastics', 'Hockey', 'Rugby', 'Snooker', 'Tennis'];
  public render() {
    return (
        // specifies the tag for render the AutoComplete component
      <AutoCompleteComponent id="atcelement" dataSource={this.sportsData}  placeholder="Find a game" />
    );
  }
}
ReactDOM.render(<App />, document.getElementById('sample'));

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">

<head>
    <title>Syncfusion React DropDownList</title>
    <meta charset="utf-8" />
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />
    <meta name="description" content="Essential JS 2 for React Components" />
    <meta name="author" content="Syncfusion" />
    <link href="//cdn.syncfusion.com/ej2/ej2-base/styles/material.css" rel="stylesheet" />
    <link href="//cdn.syncfusion.com/ej2/ej2-react-inputs/styles/material.css" rel="stylesheet" />
    <link href="//cdn.syncfusion.com/ej2/ej2-react-dropdowns/styles/material.css" rel="stylesheet" />
    <script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/systemjs/0.19.38/system.js"></script>
    <script src="systemjs.config.js"></script>
    <style>
        #loader {
            color: #008cff;
            height: 40px;
            left: 45%;
            position: absolute;
            top: 45%;
            width: 30%;
        }
    </style>
</head>

<body>
    <div id='sample' style="margin: 20px auto 0; width:250px;">
        <div id='loader'>Loading....</div>
    </div>
</body>

</html>

By default, the width of the popup list automatically adjusts according to the AutoComplete input element’s width and the height of the popup list has ‘300px’.

You can also customize the suggestion list height and width using popupHeight and popupWidth property respectively.

In the following sample, popup list’s width and height are configured.