Bootstrap typeahead call to ColdFusion

Question

I am trying to make a simple test with Typeahead.js that fetches its data from a coldfusion component that returns a simple JSON string with the data.

Here is my AjaxCtrl.cfc

<cfcomponent output="false">
    <cffunction name="GetParams" access="remote" output="false">
        <cfset objData = [
            {   PARAMCODE = "SYSTEM_PARAM_1", 
                PARAMVAL = "FALSE" 
            },
            {   PARAMCODE = "SYSTEM_PARAM_2",            
                PARAMVAL = true 
            },
            {   PARAMCODE = "SYSTEM_PARAM3",             
                PARAMVAL = "1003" 
            },
            {   PARAMCODE = "SYSTEM_PARAM4",             
                PARAMVAL = 1004 
            }
        ] />
        <cfreturn objData >
    </cffunction>
</cfcomponent>

So when I try to access http://localhost/foo/bar/AjaxCtrl.cfc?method=GetParams in my browser I get the following output as expected :

[{"PARAMCODE":"SYSTEM_PARAM_1","PARAMVAL":false},{"PARAMCODE":"SYSTEM_PARAM_2","PARAMVAL":true},{"PARAMCODE":"SYSTEM_PARAM_3","PARAMVAL":1003},{"PARAMCODE":"SYSTEM_PARAM_4","PARAMVAL":1004}]

Then here is my javascript file

// constructs the suggestion engine
var engine = new Bloodhound({
  datumTokenizer: function(d) { return Bloodhound.tokenizers.whitespace(d.PARAMCODE); },
  queryTokenizer: Bloodhound.tokenizers.whitespace,
  prefetch: "http://localhost/dev/test/djb/AjaxCtrl.cfc?method=GetParams"
  }
);

// kicks off the loading/processing of `local` and `prefetch`
engine.initialize();

$( "input.typeahead" ).typeahead({
  hint: true,
  highlight: true,
  minLength: 1
},
{
  name: 'parameters',
  displayKey: 'PARAMCODE',
  source: engine.ttAdapter()
});

So far I only could make it work with the LOCAL hardcoded data examples. Nothing will work with all the examples I've tried whether it's prefetch or remote. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

I solved it by adding returnFormat="JSON" to my <cffunction>, otherwise it sends the data through a "wddxpacket" and Typeahead obviously cannot handle straight out of the box.