jQuery Autocomplete not working with Json data

There are a whole bunch of tutorials out there explaining how to do this, eg here and here.

Looks real easy huh? Yet I've still somehow managed to waste half a day on it without getting anything working.

Eg: the following works absolutely fine

public ActionResult FindStuff(string q)
{
    return Content("test");
}

$('#MyTextBox').autocomplete("MyController/FindStuff", {
    parse: function(data) {
        alert('parsing');
    }
});

If I change it to the following, absolutely nothing happens.

public JsonResult FindStuff(string q)
{
    return Json(new { name = "test" });
}

$('#MyTextBox').autocomplete("MyController/FindStuff", {
    dataType: 'json', // I've also tried with this line commented out
    parse: function(data) {
        alert('parsing');
    }
});

So it looks like the parse call is never being hit, i.e. I'm assuming the data load is blowing up somehow or thinks ther开发者_如何学编程e is no data. Any ideas? Thanks.

p.s. it's the Jorn Zaefferer plugin here.

---

Make sure that you are returning an array and that you allow GET requests (in case your are using ASP.NET MVC 2.0):

public ActionResult FindStuff(string q)
{
    return Json(new[] { new { name = "test" } }, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
}

And then follow the examples:

$('#MyTextBox').autocomplete("MyController/FindStuff", {
    dataType: 'json',
    parse: function (data) {
        var rows = new Array();
        for (var i = 0; i < data.length; i++) {
            rows[i] = { data: data[i], value: data[i].name };
        }
        return rows;
    },
    formatItem: function (row, i, n) {
        return row.name;
    }
});

Works nicely.

Remark: FireBug helps diagnosing problems very quickly as it shows you exactly what AJAX requests are being sent and why they succeed or fail.