Is there a way to submit new value?

[apohllo]

It seems that there is no (obvious) way to accept a new value in the field, besides those appearing in the auto-complete list. Is that true?

[mhuggins]

It's not easily supported at the moment. Since this is built upon jQuery autocomplete, it really comes down to manipulating some JS. You'll need to find the autocomplete by giving it an ID, then call $.autocomplete with the new values. The only thing is, when you call it on your own, you'll have to consider the other options that get passed in by this gem as seen here. I didn't include those options in the example before, since I'm not sure if jQuery will preserve them or not. I'm assuming not though.

But in short, I imagine you can do something like this...

= f.input :unit, as: :autocomplete,
                 source: ['cup', 'tablespoon', 'teaspoon'],
                 input_html: { id: 'my_input' }

var $input = $('#my_input');
var data = JSON.parse($input.data('source'));

$input.autocomplete({
  source: source: function (request, response) {
    var result = $.ui.autocomplete.filter(data, request.term);
    response(result);
  }
});

// now you can add items to source now
data.push('ounce');
data.push('quart');

[apohllo]

I thought about much more simpler solution: naming the input field where you enter the value that is searched in the DB. In that case (when a new value is entered) the value would be submitted as a param and could be used to insert a new value for the associated model. Let me know what you think about this idea.

[mhuggins]

That's what I would do. That also comes in handy when supplying a string/URL alternative for the source value, which I personally use exclusively.