minLength: 0 should be implemented

Currently minLength: 0 behaves like minLength: 1. In some applications it is quite useful to be able to fetch and display all of the possibilities right away because the number is small enough or they are cleverly sorted by likelihood of relevance. This can eliminate the need to use a different component for an almost identical use case.

[prmichaelsen]

Hi, @ericgio, thank you for your fast response. This may be the intended behavior, but it doesn’t seem correct. If the user can specify a minLength of 0 (which is valid according to the docs), then the onSearch should fire for empty queries.

Consider my use-case. I have a dataset of 1000+ entries. When the user has no query, we display a short list of likely relevant choices. This means if the user types a query, and then removes it, we would need to once again display the likely relevant choices.

[ericgio]

there is no way to inform my data provider that there is no longer a query

Sure there is. You can use onInputChange to get the current input value. onSearch is just a debounced callback being passed to onInputChange anyway.

Note that AsyncTypeahead is just an HOC that adds some simple debouncing and a basic cache to the main Typeahead component. It’s provided with the library for convenience and to handle most simple async use cases. If it doesn’t meet your needs you can easily write your own HOC that handles things exactly as you’d like them to.