[Unified Search] Field autocomplete only matches from the beginning of the field name

[timductive]

The Field autocomplete starts matching from the beginning of the field, but many long field names are only unique at the end of the field name. Think "cluster.host.name.id" where you want to search on just the "id".

Searching "devtiol" should match this field.

[elasticmachine]

Pinging @elastic/kibana-visualizations @elastic/kibana-visualizations-external (Team:Visualizations)

[timductive]

We need to consider the UX of the autocomplete suggestions for these long fields names too.

[dej611]

I think this task can be better addressed once the EuiCombo component gets the EuiTextTruncate feature in: elastic/eui#7028

[JasonStoltz]

@dej611 @timductive Now that elastic/eui#7028 has been completed, is there additional work required by the EUI team to complete this task?

[dej611]

Looking at new behaviour of Combobox with the new truncation feature, I would say we should be good:

[stratoula]

@dej611 yes seems great, has the EUI version which contains this feature be merged in Kibana?

[dej611]

I can see it landing here: #166868

[dej611]

While #166868 solves the truncation problem, I think there's still some work on our side for this feature to be done as it looks search findings are wiped out with an add custom option X if the search doesn't match from the beginning:

[dej611]

Had a quick look at this use case but it can be quite challening to support autocomplete beside starting matches:

• in order to support other types of matching it requires the allowLeadingWildcards - even just for this internal use cases - with potential performance issues
• support a "half" solution of filtering the current results (provided by ComboBox matching algo) AND in case of no suggestions retrieved by the autocomplete, use the partial former results - might be ok, but results can be misleading here
• Support clearly only matches who starts with query string - this means even reduce the ComboBox searching feature to only match at the beginning of the string

[dej611]

Note that for the field name instead it seems to work great:

[cee-chen]

(Cross-posting this comment from elastic/eui#7236 for more visibility and to get more UX feedback)

I strongly think this usage of EuiComboBox should be using the async and isLoading props. Here is what the end UX would look like (essentially the flash of incorrect matches in #158876 (comment) is replaced by a loading message instead):

While the load time doesn't necessarily feel great, this is (IMO) the more technically correct approach that we specifically demo in our docs, and also given that EuiComboBox does not know the full list of suggestions (if they're async) and could therefore also be suggesting incomplete items regardless of matching logic.

You can pull down my spike here to test this locally: main...cee-chen:kibana:combobox-async-suggestions

[ryankeairns]

EUI seems to be providing a set of capabilities that can be worked into a solution here, so I am in favor of closing the sibling issue over there. As for this issue, I am a +1 for Cee's recommendation - the loading state feels warranted and is more accurate than potentially showing a partial (and misleading) set of results.

We acknowledge that there are likely some UX guidelines needed for building such search experiences. We'll track that in our patterns work and, ultimately, provide a clearer take on how we believe search should behave (e.g. don't show partial results, match anywhere in the string, etc.).