jQuery UI auto-complete response index problem

Question

I am using the jQuery ui-complete library which calls an endpoint via get request to populate a list of suggested autors:

$("#author-name").autocomplete({
                source: "/authors/get.json",
                minLength: 5,
                select: function(event, ui) {
                    event.preventDefault();
                    $("#author-name").val(ui.item.label);
                    $("#author-id").val(ui.item.value);
                }

});

The issue is the format of the reply, which is wrapped inside an indexed array as follows:

{
    "reply": [
        {
            "value": 9,
            "label": "Joe Bloggs"
        },
    ]
}

Is it possible to tell the response to be treated from the reply object, something like:

select: function(event, ui.reply) {

I've read the api docs on the library but couldn't find a solution.

Answer 1

source is expecting an array so you are going to have to adjust what you are assigning to it.
In the example below, I simply made a new function to get the data then access the reply array and that is what I pass to Autocomplete source

$(document).ready(function() {

  function getResponse() {
    var response = {
      "reply": [{
          "value": 9,
          "label": "Joe Bloggs"
        },
        {
          "value": 10,
          "label": "foo"
        },
      ]
    }; // in your case: read data from /authors/get.json

    return response.reply;
  }

  $("#tags").autocomplete({
    source: getResponse(),
    select: function(event, ui) {
      event.preventDefault();
      console.log(ui.item.value);
      console.log(ui.item.label);
    }
  });
});

<script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.3.1.min.js" integrity="sha256-FgpCb/KJQlLNfOu91ta32o/NMZxltwRo8QtmkMRdAu8=" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
<script src="https://code.jquery.com/ui/1.12.1/jquery-ui.min.js" integrity="sha256-VazP97ZCwtekAsvgPBSUwPFKdrwD3unUfSGVYrahUqU=" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.12.1/jquery-ui.css" />

<div class="ui-widget">
  <label for="tags">Tags: </label>
  <input id="tags">
</div>