For a reference field in catalog, display a column but don't search with the column value

[Aniket1498]

I have a reference field referred to cmn_department in a catalog item. I want to display the fields name, id, parent to the user but want to restrict the user from searching with parent.

For Example, if I have 30 records with Parent as "IT" and also a record as "IT", while searching in the field with "IT", it should show only one record without parent and not the complete 31 records. Also, if I search with any id, it should show the results having the id.

Field name in Catalog: u_department
Reference: cmn_department
Variable Attributes: ref_ac_columns=name;id;parent,ref_ac_columns_search=true,ref_ac_display_value=true,ref_ac_order_by=name,ref_auto_completer=AJAXTableCompleter


I believe that something needs to be altered in the variable attribute for this to work. Kindly help out here.

[Sandeep Rajput · Accepted solution]

@Aniket1498 Setting the Reference auto completer columns search (ref_ac_columns_search) property to true allows a user to search within the reference field, by any field specified in the ref_ac_columns property. Since the parent field is already included in ref_ac_columns attribute in your case, the search will always return those additional records. Unfortunately, there is no way to control this.

Hope this answers your question.