What are common mistakes when building an autocomplete search bar?
No debounce (excessive API calls), no keyboard navigation (mouse only), no no-results state (blank list), no click-outside-to-close (suggestions stay open), race conditions (old responses overwrite new), no highlighting, and no loading state.
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More FAQs in Autocomplete Common Mistakes and How to Fix Them
Use AbortController to cancel previous requests. Before each fetch, abort the previous controller and create a new one. Pass the signal to fetch. Only the latest query's response is processed.
Without debounce, every keystroke triggers an API call. Typing 'hello' makes 5 calls. This is slow, wastes server resources, and can cause race conditions. Debounce (300ms) reduces this to 1 call after the user stops typing.
Check if the filtered items array is empty. If so, show a 'No results found' message instead of a blank list. This gives the user feedback that the search was performed but found nothing.
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