Places Autocomplete for Laravel

A Laravel package that provides a simple Blade component to integrate the Google Places Autocomplete functionality into your application with minimal setup.

It handles API loading, session tokens for cost-effective usage, and fetching place details, allowing you to focus on building your application.

Features

• Simple Integration: Add address autocomplete to any form with a single Blade component.
• Cost-Effective: Automatically handles session tokens to reduce Google API costs.
• Customizable: Configure the component's behavior through an options array.
• Event-Driven: Dispatches a custom event with the selected place data for easy handling in your frontend JavaScript.

Live Demo

See a comprehensive live demo of the underlying JavaScript library in action: pacservice.pages.dev

Requirements

• Laravel 9.x or higher
• A Google Maps API Key with the Places API enabled. You can get one from the Google Cloud Console.

Installation

You can install the package via Composer:

composer require alexpechkarev/laravel-places-autocomplete

Configuration

1. Publish the configuration file. This will create a config/places-autocomplete.php file where you can set default options. The view file will be published to resources/views/vendor/places-autocomplete and the JavaScript files to public/vendor/places-autocomplete/.

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="PlacesAutocomplete\PlacesAutocompleteServiceProvider"

2. Add your Google Maps API key to your .env file. This is a required step.

// filepath: .env
GOOGLE_MAPS_API_KEY="YOUR_API_KEY_HERE"

Usage

1. Add the Component

Use the <x-places-autocomplete> component in your Blade views. Because the component's root element has a dynamically generated ID, the recommended approach is to wrap it in your own div with a stable ID. This makes it easy to target with JavaScript.

// filepath: resources/views/your-form.blade.php
<form>
    <label for="address">Address</label>

    {{-- Wrap the component in a div with a known ID --}}
    <div id="address-wrapper">
        <x-places-autocomplete
            root-div-id="address-wrapper"
            :options="[
                'placeholder' => 'Start typing your address...',
            ]"
        />
    </div>

    {{-- Other fields to be populated by JavaScript --}}
    <div class="mt-4">
        <label for="city">City</label>
        <input type="text" id="city" name="city" class="form-control">
    </div>
    <div>
        <label for="postcode">Postcode</label>
        <input type="text" id="postcode" name="postcode" class="form-control">
    </div>
</form>

2. Handle the Response

When a user selects an address, the component dispatches a pac-response custom event on its root div. You can listen for this event to receive the place data.

Add the following JavaScript to your application.

// filepath: resources/js/app.js
document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function () {
  // Listen for the custom event emitted by the PlacesAutocomplete component
  document
    .getElementById("address-wrapper")
    .addEventListener("pac-response", function (event) {
      const placeDetails = event.detail;
      //console.log('Place Selected:', placeDetails);

      // Populate other fields based on the selected place details
      if (placeDetails.addressComponents) {
        placeDetails.addressComponents.forEach((component) => {
          if (component.types.includes("postal_town")) {
            document.getElementById("city").value = component.longText;
          }
          if (component.types.includes("postal_code")) {
            document.getElementById("postcode").value = component.longText;
          }
        });
      }
    });

  // Handle errors from the PlacesAutocomplete component
  document
    .getElementById("address-wrapper")
    .addEventListener("pac-error", function (event) {
      console.error("Autocomplete Error:", event.detail);
    });
});

Component Options

You can customize the component by passing an :options array. These options are passed to the underlying places-autocomplete-js library.

Option	Type	Description
placeholder	string	Placeholder text for the input field.
debounce	integer	Delay in milliseconds before sending a request (default: 100).
clear_input	boolean	Whether to clear the input after selection.
language	string	The language code for results (e.g., 'en-GB').

For a full list of options, please refer to the JavaScript library's documentation.

Note: The name attribute of the generated <input> is not currently configurable. The input's data will not be submitted with a standard form post; you must use JavaScript to handle the pac-response event and populate your form fields as shown in the example above.

Support

If you encounter any issues or have questions, please open an issue on GitHub.

License

This package is open-source software licensed under the MIT license.