Developing autocomplete / search plugin

Hi, .bubble community,

I’m new to bubble.io (but an experienced developer) and need directions about developing a custom plugin. (I’ve searched the forum for similar questions, but there is no satisfactory answer).

My external API can search, suggest/autocorrect and validate different types of entities (occupations, skills, cities, proper names) in different languages and scripts. I want to create an input field and form plugin to facilitate autocomplete and correction of such entities and some validation logic.

I’ve built a proof of concept using the bubble app with API and repeatable elements in a few minutes, and it works well (great job, Bubble team), but I am unsure how to create a plugin from it. As far as I understand, I can easily create it using jQuery. Still, it defies the purpose of no coding philosophy so that bubble developers can easily customise its functionality if they use API directly and edit field+repeatablue group. I suppose one option is to try to inherit the built-in search box, but I’ve not found the option to fork or inherit it.

Any suggestion on how to proceed or what to look for would be appreciated.

Are you familiar enough with Bubble’s plugin editor?

Might be worthwhile to watch a video like this: https://youtu.be/OX_g4GlAt9A. I’m sure the programming concepts are no challenge to you. But the quirks of the way that Bubble does plugins might be new.

Otherwise, share a video / screenshots of how you got the app working and maybe the hive mind can further help.

Rico, thank you so much; this video seems very helpful, will try to get Bubble plugin logic from it