jQuery Grid Plugin - jqGrid

I was trying to implement autocomplete for a textbox which is generated by jQgrid.

When I use data such as ["blah","hello","howdy"] in source of $ac.autocomplete,

the thing seems to work nicely. But I have around 2000 rows of data to search

from. The jQgrid form is working correctly and I am being able to add & edit data.

Also, I have tested the php page which displays proper JSON data when I point a

browser at it. I am only struck with autocomplete with data returned from the php

page since I am not much comfortable with jQuery. Please help.

A Php page would return JSON data. Here's what I was able to do so far: (Please help)

function autocomplete_element(value, options) {

  var $ac = $('<input type="text"/>');

  $ac.val(value);

  $ac.autocomplete({

    source: function(request, response) {

        $.getJSON("autocomplete.php", { q: request.term }, response);

    }

  });

  return $ac;

}


function autocomplete_value(elem, op, value) {

  if (op == "set") {

    $(elem).val(value);

  }

  return $(elem).val();

}


$(function(){


  $("#list").jqGrid({

    url:'process1.php',

    datatype: 'xml',

    mtype: 'GET',

    colNames:['Column Name'],

    colModel :[ 

        {name:'columnid', index:'columnid', width:50, edittype:'custom', 

            editoptions: {

                custom_element : autocomplete_element,

                custom_value   : autocomplete_value

            }

        }

    ]


........

........





////////////////////////////////////////////////

///         THE PHP PAGE                    ////

////////////////////////////////////////////////

/*

    autocomplete.php

*/




<?php

    require_once("../dbconfig.php");

    $term = trim(strip_tags($_REQUEST['q']));//retrieve the search term that autocomplete sends


    $qstring = "SELECT description as value, id FROM test WHERE name LIKE '%".$term."%'";

    $result = mysql_query($qstring);//query the database for entries containing the term



    while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result,MYSQL_ASSOC))//loop through the retrieved values

    {

        $row['id']=(int)$row['id'];

        $row['value']=htmlentities(stripslashes($row['value']));

        $row_set[] = $row;//build an array

    }


    echo json_encode($row_set);//format the array into json data



?>