jqgrid Toolbar search on custom formatted column - json

Question

I am loading JQGrid from an API, one of the data structures that I have for my grid is a JSON element formatted as such:
{"id":123,"name":"John Doe","username":"john.doe"}
The data is properly displayed in the grid, however if I try to type in the toolbar search, I do not get a match presumably because jqgrid still has the above JSON stored as an object.
A truncated version of my grid is as follows:
$('#test').jqGrid({
...
loadonce: true,
datatype: 'local',
colModel: [
{name:'test', index:'test', label:'Test', formatter:customFormatter}
],
...
});
function customFormatter (cellvalue,options) {
return cellvalue.name;
}
I found this post that seems to address this very matter, however I am struggling to get my head around as to how to use this for a JSON object. Once the grid is loaded, I don't see a reason as to why the local data should be anything other than string (Until the grid is reloaded).

Answer 1

After stumbling upon the JSON dot notation in the docs, and adding it to the index this now works:
colModel: [
{name:'test.name', index:'test.name', label:'Test'}
]

Answer 2

You should choose name property of colModel which corresponds the names of the properties in the JSON input. So it's native to use just
colModel: [
{name: "name", label: "Name"}
{name: "username", label: "User Name"}
]
If you do need to remap some names in the JSON input to another names in the colModel you should use jsonmap property. For example
colModel: [
{name: "test1", label: "Name", jsonmap: "name"}
{name: "test2", label: "User Name", jsonmap: "username"}
]
The usage of index different as name is not possible in case of usage of loadonce: true. It is not recommended to use values of name property which have . or any other meta-character. The restriction exist because the name property will be used to build id property of many elements of the grid.