after doing some more googling didnt find one answer which worked which is to
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12257555/jqgrid-aftersavefunc-not-called-on-saverow[
^]
which is to also pass extra id item as part of extradata in saveRow function.
this however was no good for me as i would need to change my backend code and write some more functions and make many modifications to code each time i wanted to another autocomplete field.
so after some messing about with jquery in firefox ive found a better fix which i would like to share if anyone else needs.
what i did is
var name = myGridBrands.find('.ui-autocomplete-input').attr('name');
updateacinput( lastselBrands , name);
myGridBrands.jqGrid('saveRow', lastselBrands , false);
the way jqgrid inline edit works is each row makes inputs with ids in the format of
"id ='#7_Name' " or " id ='#2_Size'"
so i send in the right id and name and use jquery .val() to update value and everything now works posting the right data to controller.
nice thing about this now is that i can use all over the place with pretty much 1-2 lines setup
function updateacinput(id, name) {
$('#' + id + '_' + name).val(getacid());
}
function getacid() {
return $('input:hidden[id=\'acid\']').val();
}