Removing [nid:n] in nodereference autocomplete

Question

Using the autocomplete field for a cck nodereference always displays the node id as a cryptic bracketed extension:

Page Title [nid:23]

I unders

Answer 1

What Grayside has posted will work... as long as you don't have two nodes with the same title. In other words, if you want to do as Grayside has proposed, you need to be aware that the nid is not entirely unimportant. The nodereference_autocomplete_validate() function does two things. It checks to see if there is a node that matches, and if so, it passes the nid on, setting it to the $form_state array. If it can't find a node, it will set an error. If the nid is present, it will be used to get the node, which also is faster, the code is here:

preg_match('/^(?:\s*|(.*) )?\[\s*nid\s*:\s*(\d+)\s*\]$/', $value, $matches);
    if (!empty($matches)) {
        // Explicit [nid:n].
        list(, $title, $nid) = $matches;
        if (!empty($title) && ($n = node_load($nid)) && $title != $n->title) {
            form_error($element[$field_key], t('%name: title mismatch. Please check your selection.', array('%name' => t($field['widget']['label']))));
        }
    }

This just checks to see if there is a nid and checks if that node matches with the title, if so the nid is passed on.

The 2nd option is a bit slower, but it is here errors can happen. If you follow the execution, you will see, that if will try to find a node based on title alone, and will take the first node that matches. The result of this, is that if you have two nodes with the same title, one of them will always be used. This might not be a problem for you, but the thing is, that you will never find out if this happens. Everything will work just fine and the user will think that he selected the node he wanted to. This might be the case, but he might as well have chosen the wrong node.

So in short, you can get rid of the nid in the autocomplete callback, but it has 2 drawbacks:

1. performance (little)
2. uncertainty in selecting the correct node.

So you have to think about it, before going this route. Especially, since you most likely wont be able to find the problem of the selection of the wrong nodes, should it happen. Another thing to be aware of, is that the nid showing up, also brings some valuable info to the users, a quick way to lookup the node, should they be in doubt if it is the one they want, if several nodes have similar titles.