Plugin-Development: Populating (and updating) SelectCFType

[feChiari]

Hi,

I'm new to both Java and JIRA-Development so please forgive the potentially ignorant question. :)

I'm trying to write a plugin that provides a custom select field, which is automatically populated with data from another service. So far, I've got my field and I'm setting the available options in getVelocityParameters(...) like so:

Options options = this.optionsManager.getOptions(fieldConfig);
if (options.isEmpty()) {

 ArrayList<JSONObject> projects = GetProjectList();

 for (int i = 0; i < projects.size(); i++) {
   Long id = projects.get(i).getLong("id");
   String identifier = projects.get(i).getString("name");
   this.optionsManager.createOption(fieldConfig, null, id, identifier);
 }

}
options = this.optionsManager.getOptions(fieldConfig);

This works, but all options have to be deleted before the field is updated.
Instead of the if-clause, I tried to just clear all options by calling 

this.optionsManager.removeCustomFieldOptions(field)

and then repopulate the field every time. That also worked in that the field's options would always get updated, but the selection wouldn't save anymore.

I'm wondering

- Is there a better way to do this?
- Is it possible to render my field with autocomplete, like, for example the priority field?

Any help is much appreciated.

Edit:

Spent some more time on this. Apparently, the real issue with clearing the options before each update is that the newly added ones also get new id's - which don't match those stored in the db. It doesn't seem like I can just set the id's myself, though.