Sort autocomplete suggestions by first letter alphabetical - php

Question

I want to sort autocomplete suggestions by first letter alphabetical.
Now it look like this: http://i.imgur.com/EevFyv2.png
If i type letter C i want to show tag suggestions like this:
C
C++
Active Directory
Apple Script
BlueCoat
Code:
$text = $mysqli->real_escape_string($_GET['term']);
$query = "SELECT * FROM autocomplete WHERE name LIKE '%$text%' ORDER BY name ASC";
$result = $mysqli->query($query);
$json = '[';
$first = true;
while($row = $result->fetch_assoc())
{
if (!$first) { $json .= ','; } else { $first = false; }
$json .= '{"value":"'.$row['name'].'"}';
}
$json .= ']';
echo $json;
I hope someone could help, thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You would need
SELECT *
FROM autocomplete
WHERE name LIKE '%$text%'
ORDER BY (name LIKE '$text%') DESC,
name ASC
The first ORDER BY clause is a BOOLEAN value that is 1 when name starts with $text and 0 otherwise, so when you sort by that in DESC order, values starting with $text will be moved to the front of the list (and those only containing it elsewhere will be moved to the end). The second clause then sorts both "sublists" alphabetically again.

Answer 2

Update. As it seems that you need suggestions that start with the entered prefix to appear first in the list, you'll need to use a user-sorting function. I've updated the code to match this.
If you want to do the sort in PHP, you need to create an array with the results, and sort it via one the PHP array sorting function. Here's your modified code that uses the usort() function:
$term = $_GET['term'];
$text = $mysqli->real_escape_string($term);
$query = "SELECT * FROM autocomplete WHERE name LIKE '%$text%' ORDER BY name ASC";
$result = $mysqli->query($query);
$results = array();
while($row = $result->fetch_assoc())
{
$results[] = $row['name'];
}
usort($results, function($item1, $item2) use($term) {
// prefixed items need to go first
$item1HasPrefix = strpos($item1, $term) === 0;
$item2HasPrefix = strpos($item2, $term) === 0;
if($item1HasPrefix && $item2HasPrefix) {
// if both items have the prefix, sort them
return strcmp($item1, $item2);
} elseif($item1HasPrefix) {
return -1;
} elseif($item2HasPrefix) {
return 1;
} else {
return strcmp($item1, $item2);
}
});
echo json_encode($results);

Answer 3

You can try bootstrap-typeahead JS autocomplete library in Client Side.
https://twitter.github.io/typeahead.js/examples/