Autocomplete extender on a textbox without using webservice.

Question

Hi Guys,

I don't want to use a webservice to populate an autocomplete extender on a textbox. In this case, it's where the user is entering country name and I don't want to make a trip to the database every single time. I'd much rather keep a collection in session state and 'bind' the autocomplete to that.

Is it possible to set ServicePath and/or ServiceMethod to something in the codebehind as opposed to a webservice?

Regards kumar

Answer 1

Does your list of countries change, or vary by user? It doesn't seem to make sense to put this in session state, either. I don't see why you should hit the server for this.

Consider rendering all of your values directly into HTML and then using Javascript to autocomplete entirely on the client side.

Answer 2

You can use a local asmx file inside your existing web project and connect to that. There you can put any logic you require here so you don't have to hit a database if you don't want to. It's really just like another webpage that should have no problems accessing session state.

Answer 3

Unfortunately, there is no direct option to do that other than hacking into javascript to stop the browser from making a call to get the list.

The only other choice I can see is to create a webservice & use EnableCaching property of AutoCompleteExtender, to make sure the result of the webservice is cached on the client, thereby avoiding calls to webservice (and database in turn).

EDIT: On a second thought, I think it could be possible to mark a public static method in your page with WebMethod attribute & set the ServicePath to your aspx page.

see if this helps - http://blogs.msdn.com/sburke/archive/2006/10/21/hint-components-that-use-web-services-with-asp-net-ajax-v1-0-beta.aspx

I think it should work. But am not sure, if the framework requires it to be the webservice.

Answer 4

you can set the onclientpopulating attribute to your local javascript function something like onclientpopulating="onPopulating" and then in that js function provide the local data instead of hitting the web service. below is one of the implementations which i used which never hits the webservice. completionData variable holds all the data through which i iterate to find the match based on what the user entered in the text box. This is an old example. i probably would do it little differently if i implemented it now.

    function onPopulating(ace, args)
    {
       var prefixText = ace._currentCompletionWord();
       var filteredItems = GetFilteredItems(prefixText);
       ace._update(prefixText,filteredItems,false);
       args.set_cancel(true);

    }

    function GetFilteredItems(prefixText)
    {
        var filteredItems = []; 
        for (var nCount=0; nCount < completionData.length; nCount ++)
        {
            if (completionData[nCount].startsWith(prefixText))
            {
                Array.add(filteredItems,completionData[nCount]);

            }
        }
        return filteredItems; 
    }