Best Practices

This section provides recommendations for performance, reliability, and user experience when using the New Autosuggest SDK in production.

Debouncing

Debouncing helps control how frequently new Autosuggest SDK API calls are made while the user is typing.

  • A debounceDelay of 300–500 milliseconds is recommended for most use cases.
  • This improves performance and reduces unnecessary API calls.
  • A value of 0 disables debouncing entirely.
  • Disabling debouncing is not recommended for production environments, as it can lead to excessive API requests.

Minimum Characters

The minChars configuration determines when new Autosuggest SDK API calls are triggered.

  • A value of 2 or 3 characters is recommended for a balanced user experience.
  • Lower values may result in excessive API calls.
  • Higher values may delay suggestions and negatively impact usability.

Suggestion Counts

Each suggestion type supports configurable count values.

  • Adjust counts based on available UI space and design requirements.
  • Higher counts may increase API response time.
  • Maintain a balance between richness of suggestions and performance.

Template Customization

Custom templates allow you to fully control the look and structure of the autosuggestion UI.

  • Use custom templates to align the new Autosuggest SDK UI with your site’s design system.
  • The template function receives all suggestion data as props.
  • Always return a valid HTML string from the template function.

Error Handling

Proper error handling is critical for production applications.

  • Always provide an onEvent callback in production when you need to handle errors or track events.
  • Log errors for debugging and monitoring.
  • Consider integrating with an error tracking or observability service to capture failures in real time.

API Endpoint

The New Autosuggest SDK uses a default API endpoint.

  • Use the default endpoint unless you have a custom deployment or setup.
  • Ensure the endpoint is accessible from your domain and environment.

Attributes

The attributes option (under suggestionBoxConfigs) allows you to attach HTML attributes to the autosuggestion container. See Configuration.

  • Useful for applying CSS classes, IDs, and data attributes.
  • Helps with styling, testing, and DOM querying.
  • Array values (such as for class) are fully supported and handled appropriately by the SDK.