Why do you need to cancel previous requests in an autocomplete?
To prevent race conditions. If the user types 'hello', 5 requests may be in flight. The 'h' response might arrive after 'he', overwriting the correct results. Cancelling previous requests ensures only the latest query's response is used.
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More FAQs in Autocomplete API Calls and Caching
Use fetch: const res = await fetch(`/api/suggestions?q=${encodeURIComponent(query)}`); return await res.json(). Always encode the query with encodeURIComponent to handle special characters.
Use a Map: if cache.has(query) return cache.get(query); otherwise fetch, then cache.set(query, data). This avoids duplicate API calls for the same query, improving performance and reducing server load.
Use AbortController: before each fetch, abort the previous controller and create a new one. Pass the signal to fetch. If the user types quickly, only the last request completes; previous ones are aborted.
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