I recently put together an Ajax autocomplete example using PHP and Mysql so I could post it on my blog, but after getting it working outside wordpress on an independent page I had trouble getting it into wordpress.
I had used plugins in the past which allowed for php code to be used with shortcodes, but inline javascript calls are not something I had gotten past the wordpress editor before. The php code used for retrieving data from the database is in a separate file so no shortcode is needed for that portion.
The inclusion of the javascript autosuggest functions is something I first tried putting in a code block in the wordpress post itself as a link to the external file (autosuggest.js), but unfortunately that didn’t work. Then I saw an article where someone suggested putting the javascript in the theme file header.php and surround it with a php if statement checking for the specific post you want it to appear on. I tried that but later removed it because I wanted my ajax to work on the index page, archive pages, and category/tag/author pages – not just the “single post” page.
Then I went back to the plugin I had installed (CSS & JavaScript Toolbox) for css and javascript and tried putting the entire contents of the autosuggest.js file into one javascript block and installing that in the footer. That worked perfectly so I did the same thing for the css file using the same plugin.
The next challenge was to add the inline JavaScript (ajax) function calls from within the html code for the sample input box in the wordpress post. When I tried just putting it all into the html editor for wordpress the javascript was removed. This was not just a snippet of complete javascript or css though, so I couldn’t just use the same plugin to make another code block and put it in the header or footer.
Since PHP is executed as the page loads, I figured I could put my auto-complete input box with ajax call into a php shortcode and put the shortcode where I wanted the input box to be in my html code. That way wordpress would not filter out the javascript when saving the post contents to the database because it would be hidden behind a shortcode which would be replaced during page loading.
This worked beatifully, including the inline javascript by putting it inside a php shortcode. I used the Shortcode Exec PHP plugin for this, which is very easy to work with.
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