Autocomplete field in a submission form - dspace 7.5

[Aroldo Rique]

Hello, everybody!

Is it possible to put an autocomplete field on the item submission form? We have a large list of possible authors and an autocomplete field would do just fine. I know there are options for hierarchical controlled lists, but what about autocomplete, is it possible?

For example, when inserting an item, we use an autocomplete field to discover the collection where the item will be inserted:

I would like to use an autocomplete field in a submission form field, like this:

Aroldo Rique

[Tim Donohue]

Hi Aroldo,

The example screenshot you are showing is not actually an "autocomplete".  It's a search to locate a Collection where you want to add the new Item.

At this time, we don't have a similar feature in the DSpace submission fields except in two scenarios:

1) When you use Configurable Entities: https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSDOC7x/Configurable+Entities

If you use Configurable Entities, the default "Publication" entity submission form allows you to search for authors (Person Entities) in ORCID or in your local DSpace.  This works similar to the screenshot you show above... but it won't work for a normal Item submission form.

2) If you use authority control / controlled vocabularies on specific fields, then those fields can only select from the values in that vocabulary.  Documentation on  that is found here: https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSDOC7x/Authority+Control+of+Metadata+Values  

But, this doesn't necessarily act like an "autocomplete"... it's just a way to select from a fixed number of values.

I think it would be possible to build autocomplete into a normal Item submission form (and maybe someone out there has code which does this).. but it doesn't exist out-of-the-box right now.

Hopefully that helps answer this question a bit, but others on this list may have more thoughts to add.

Tim