jQuery UI Autocomplete: Never pop up?

Is there some way I can tell jQuery UI Autocomplete to never search? I could set minLength really high I suppose, but there is a proper way to do it?

In case you're wondering, I'm manually triggering it with an onclick event instead.

How I add the onclick handler:

if(settings.showOnClick) {
    $(this).bind('click.ajaxselect', function(e) {
        if(!$(this).data('focusHandled') && !$(this).autocomplete('widget').is(':visible')) {
            $(this).autocomplete('search','');
            $(this).data('focusHandled',true);
        } else {
            $(this).data('focusHandled',false);
        }
    }).bind('focus.ajaxselect', function(e) {
        if(!$(this).data('focusHandled') && e.hasOwnProperty('origin开发者_StackOverflow社区alEvent') && $(this).val() === this.defaultValue && !$(this).autocomplete('widget').is(':visible')) {
            $(this).autocomplete('search','');
            $(this).data('focusHandled',true);
        } else {
            $(this).data('focusHandled',false);
        }
    })
}

Set minLength to whatever you want (probably 0 since you manually trigger). Then,

$( ".selector" ).autocomplete({
    select: function(event, ui) { 
        ... // do your thing
        $( ".selector" ).autocomplete("disable");
    }
});

$( ".clicker" ).click(function() {
    ... // do your thing
    $( ".selector" ).autocomplete("enable");
});

Putting this in the search callback seems to do mostly what I want:

search: function(e, ui) {
    if(settings.minLength < 0 && e.hasOwnProperty('originalEvent')) return false;
    // other code
    return true;
},

Then if I set minLength to less than 0, typing events won't trigger a search, but my manual click event still will. Focus events seem to get cancelled too, though. Trying to determine if I'm happy about that behaviour or not.