Coffeescript loads but doesn't run code

Question

I'm trying to implement autocomplete functionality available in Jquery-ui, as part of this railscast. Ideally, I should end up with something that looks like this github repo.

But I'm having trouble with a coffeescript file that's related a resource named "contacts."

#app/assets/javascripts/contacts.js.coffee
jQuery ->
 $('#search').autocomplete
 source: "/search_suggestions"

When I run this code in the browser's console, it works. But when it's in the coffeescript file it doesn't. The file loads in the browser. It just doesn't run the code.

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

My guess is somehow you are loading this file after the document ready event has fired. You can confirm/deny this guess by doing this:

setupAutocomplete = ->
 $('#search').autocomplete
 source: "/search_suggestions"
jQuery setupAutocomplete

Then once the page is loaded, open the console and manually call the setupAutocomplete function. If things then work, it means your document ready callback never fired for this, presumably because it happened before this code was loaded. So look into that.

• Ben Downey: Well, that explanation definitely makes sense. When I run jQuery setupAutocomplete in console, though, I get an error about an unexpected identifier.
• Peter Lyons: OK, so do you actually have jQuery loaded? Did you set that up properly as a dependency?
• Ben Downey: Yes. I have jquery and jquery-ui loaded. I can all the autocomplete method from Jquery-ui via the console, which wouldn't be possible if I didn't have it setup. (Unless there's something I'm missing here. I'm definitely a jquery novice.)
• Peter Lyons: Hey do you think it might be helpful for you to actually post the stack trace from your unexpected identifier error? That indicates some basic syntax error that should be straightforward to fix when clairvoyance isn't required.