How to set focus on angular material autcomplete input field

Project Codever

1. get access to the input field via template variable @ViewChild('publicSearchBox') searchBoxField: ElementRef;
2. get access to the autcomplete trigger to close the panel (we don't want that when the page loads) - @ViewChild(MatAutocompleteTrigger) autocompleteTrigger: MatAutocompleteTrigger;
3. call focus() and closePanel() on the two elements in one of Angular's lifecycle hooks - here in AfterViewInit :

@Component({
  selector: 'app-searchbar',
  templateUrl: './searchbar.component.html',
  styleUrls: ['./searchbar.component.scss']
})
export class SearchbarComponent implements OnInit, AfterViewInit {

  @ViewChild('publicSearchBox') searchBoxField: ElementRef;
  @ViewChild(MatAutocompleteTrigger) autocompleteTrigger: MatAutocompleteTrigger;

  ngAfterViewInit(): void {
    this.searchBoxField.nativeElement.focus();
    this.autocompleteTrigger.closePanel();
  }

}

Below you can see how the referenced template variable (publicSearchBox) and the angular autocomplete trigger are defined in the angular html template:

  <input
    #publicSearchBox
    #autocompleteTrigger="matAutocompleteTrigger"
    matInput
    type="text"
    class="form-control"
    [formControl]="searchControl"
    placeholder="{{getPlaceholderTextForSearchbar()}}"
    [matAutocomplete]="auto"
    (focus)="focusOnSearchControl()"
    (focusout)="unFocusOnSearchControl()"
    [class.my-snippets-selection]="searchDomain === 'my-snippets'"
    [class.my-bookmarks-selection]="searchDomain === 'my-bookmarks'"
    [class.public-snippets-selection]="searchDomain === 'public-snippets'"
    (keyup)="watchForTags(publicSearchBox.value)"
    (keyup.enter)="$event.target.blur(); autocompleteTrigger.closePanel();searchBookmarksFromSearchBox(publicSearchBox.value)"
  >

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Comments

[Mark Evans]

Focusing Material autocomplete inputs can definitely be trickier than it first appears.

It’s interesting how even small focus behaviours like this can have wider UX and accessibility implications once applications scale.

Thanks for sharing