How to create a dynamic textfield in PHP / PDO?

I have a website where I need users to interact with other users. So far all done in JQuery / Jquery Mobile and PHP with a MySQL database.

Users need to select other users to play against in a game, but may not know their exact username.

What I would like is a dynamic textfield that searches the usertable in the DB, and pulls back usernames that match the letters in the search field, so for example a user types:

S-A-M and the textfield returns all the relevant users from the DB, SamSmith, SamJones, SamBlah, then as the user types

Solution

Yhat you're looking for is called "autocomplete"

You could do it yourself, however there are some plugins already developed to help you with that.

http://jqueryui.com/demos/autocomplete/

You'd still need to code the query to get the user list on the server side.

Hope this helps