Make ajax searches search automatically

[edward mindreantre]

Usually one has to press enter before the post/page search activates.

I'm too lazy to press enter, so I prefer the results come up as I type.

Here's the patch for that.

scribu says we should all have a long discussion as to whether to have this or not.

I'd rather wait 5 seconds than press enter, though... Because I'm effective like that.

[scribu]

Related: #14579

[edward mindreantre]

1 second keypress, now with fixed race condition

[chexee]

Not sure how long a discussion did or did not occur, but I'd like to see live search implemented.

The patch appears to be out of date and is referencing a file that no longer exists or was moved.

Related: #19452

[csixty4]

Since this ticket is still sitting around unclosed, I thought I'd fill in a little history for ​chexee and anyone else who might come across it.

Scribu's ​2010 GSOC project was to "Ajaxify" the admin interface, and he had much success. So much, in fact, that his patches were included in the first alphas & release candidates of WordPress 3.1. As this ticket relates to version 3.1, I can only assume the patches apply to those versions as well. However, these changes introduced ​bugs and usability issues so they were removed from WordPress 3.1R3.

From my own research into this, I will add that this change isn't as simple as bolting some Javascript on top of the WordPress admin. I mean, you probably could, but it would be sub-optimal from a performance & UX standpoint. Doing it right would require refactoring legacy PHP code, especially wp-admin/edit.php, to render admin page as partials which can also be invoked from an wp_ajax_* hook. That refactoring should come first, and tested throughly for regression issues. Only then should AJAX functionality be added, maybe even as part of a different point release entirely.

See also #14579

[nacin]

Going to close as wontfix since pulled out ajax list tables, and may implement them in an entirely different way if/when we do.