jQuery Autocomplete - Is caching no longer an option?

Question

Using jQuery Autocomplete, according to the docs you have to do the following to cache:

<script>
$(function() {
    var cache = {},
        lastXhr;
    $( "#birds" ).autocomplete({
        minLength: 2,
        source: function( request, response ) {
            var term = request.term;
            if ( term in cache ) {
                response( cache[ term ] );
                return;
            }

            lastXhr = $.getJSON( "search.php", request, function( data, status, xhr ) {
                cache[ term ] = data;
                if ( xhr === lastXhr ) {
                    response( data );
                }
            });
        }
    });
});
</script>

Didn't there used to be an option to cache? Thanks

Answer 1

Caching for jQueryUI autocomplete was never an option.

There was a cacheLength option for jQuery autocomplete (Jörn Zaefferer's now deprecated autocomplete plugin).

In the migration guide from autocomplete --> jQueryUI autocomplete, Jörn mentions this:

cacheLength: There is no built-in caching support anymore, but it's really easy to implement your own, as shown by the Remote with caching demo .

If you are using the caching implementation frequently, you could wrap the functionality in another plugin that encapsulates it.