I've built an app that uses the <ul> data-filter="true" and it does a great job of client-side search.  I generate my list items with a $.getJSON call to a PHP/MySQL server.  All good - the search works when the list is small. 

The problem is my app may have a very long list, in the many thousands of <li> results.  I only need to display ~50 results, but I'll need then to search server-side.  

Can someone point me to a technique to integrate the current data-filter in jquery mobile and/or add an ajax server-side search with it?