Manual:Enabling autocomplete in search box
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Autocomplete or Search suggestions is a feature that displays a drop-down list of suggestions below the search box while text is being typed. On the MediaWiki platform, this feature is provided by making queries to the Opensearch API.
The built-in autocomplete feature[edit]
MediaWiki version 1.20+:
Enabled by default. Can be disabled the same as in 1.19. $wgEnableMWSuggest has been removed.
MediaWiki version 1.13 to 1.19:
$wgUseAjax = true;
$wgEnableMWSuggest = true;
$wgUseAjax: is set true by default.
$wgEnableMWSuggest: If you are using any version above 1.19 and also using Vector as your skin, you can also set $wgVectorUseSimpleSearch = true; instead of $wgEnableMWSuggest = true;.
To disable the autocomplete feature either disable all of $wgUseAjax, or disable only the search suggestions by hiding preference disablesuggest and setting the default to true.
MediaWiki version 1.8 to 1.12:
$wgUseAjax = true;
$wgAjaxSearch = true;
MediaWiki versions 1.6 and 1.7:
$wgUseAjax = true;
See also[edit]
- TitleKey (formerly used by Wikipedia): Makes the prefix search backend case-insensitive (which affects Opensearch API and search suggestions).
- SphinxSearch: Smaller sites might want to consider using this instead of Lucene-search. It uses the Sphinx Search Engine as the back-end. As-you-type suggestions are available in version 0.8.2 (svn r9671) and above (This will only work in MediaWiki 1.18+)
- CirrusSearch (used by Wikipedia)
- Manual:Enabling autocomplete in a form: for developers, a tutorial on how to add autocomplete to any form.