Thursday, November 27, 2008

Build a Combobox in ASP.Net

As we all known, DropDownList in ASP.Net is totally different from Combobox in WinForm. However, sometimes, we hope we are able to input some words in DropDownList in ASP.Net, and the related item will be hightlighten so that we can get the functionality of Combobox in WinForm.


Fortunately, AjaxControlToolkit provides ListSearch control for us to achieve this(http://www.asp.net/AJAX/AjaxControlToolkit/Samples/ListSearch/ListSearch.aspx). But we have to build two controls to populate the functionality and type the key words above the select control.


It's still different from Combobox in Winform. We hope we can type the words inside DropDownList and the related item will be returned in the list as the below pic.
How can we achieve that?
I rebuild the whole select control with HTML code and Css so that I can input text inside select control.


Default.aspx:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head runat="server">
    <title>combobox</title>
    <link href="ListSearch.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
</head>

<script type="text/javascript">
    var dropShow = false
    var currentID
    function dropdown(el) {
        if (dropShow) {
            dropFadeOut()
        } else {
            currentID = el
            el.style.visibility = "visible"
            dropFadeIn()
        }
    }
    function dropFadeIn() {//select box fade in
        if (currentID.filters.alpha.opacity < 100) {
            currentID.filters.alpha.opacity += 20
            fadeTimer = setTimeout("dropFadeIn()", 50)
        } else {
            dropShow = true
            clearTimeout(fadeTimer)
        }
    }
    function dropFadeOut() {//select box fade out
        if (currentID.filters.alpha.opacity > 0) {
            clearTimeout(fadeTimer)
            currentID.filters.alpha.opacity -= 20
            fadeTimer = setTimeout("dropFadeOut()", 50)
        } else {
            dropShow = false
            currentID.style.visibility = "hidden"
        }
    }
    function dropdownHide() {
        if (dropShow) {
            dropFadeOut()
            dropShow = false
        }
    }
    function hiLight(el) {//highlight place
        if (dropShow) {
            for (i = 0; i < el.parentElement.childNodes.length; i++) {
                el.parentElement.childNodes(i).className = "link_record0"
            }
            el.className = "link_record1"
        }
    }
    function CheckMe(el) {//replace with the selected item
        document.all.text1.value = el.innerText

    }
    document.onclick = dropdownHide


    function listsearch() {
        if (dropShow) {

        } else {
            currentID = value1
            value1.style.visibility = "visible"
            dropFadeIn()
        }
        var word = document.all.text1.value;
        var l;
        var childsnum = value1.childNodes.length;
        for (l = 0; l < childsnum; l++) {
            var s = value1.childNodes[l].innerText;

            if (s.substring(0, word.length) == word)
                hiLight(value1.childNodes[l]);

        }

    }
</script>

<body text="#000000">
    <form id="form1" runat="server">
    <table>
        <tr>
            <td>
                <div class="link_box" onselectstart="return false" style="width: 98%;">
                    <div class="link_head" onclick="dropdown(value1)">
                        <table height="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="100%" border="0">
                            <tr>
                                <td>
                                    <div class="link_text">
                                        <nobr><input id="text1" type="text" onkeyup="listsearch()"></input></nobr>
                                    </div>
                                </td>
                                <td align="right" width="22">
                                    <div onmouseup="this.className='link_arrow0'" class="link_arrow0" onmousedown="this.className='link_arrow1'"
                                        onkeypress="this.className='link_arrow0'">
                                        6</div>
                                </td>
                            </tr>
                        </table>
                    </div>
                    <div class="link_value" id="value1" style="width: 500px; height: 300px">
                        <div class="link_record0" onmouseover="hiLight(this)" onclick="CheckMe(this);document.all.form1.city.value=this.innerText">
                            <label>
                                attach</label></div>
                        <div class="link_record0" onmouseover="hiLight(this)" onclick="CheckMe(this);document.all.form1.city.value=this.innerText">
                            <label>
                                bea</label></div>
                        <div class="link_record0" onmouseover="hiLight(this)" onclick="CheckMe(this);document.all.form1.city.value=this.innerText">
                            <label>
                                free</label></div>
                        <div class="link_record0" onmouseover="hiLight(this)" onclick="CheckMe(this);document.all.form1.city.value=this.innerText">
                            <label>
                                jump</label></div>
                        <div class="link_record0" onmouseover="hiLight(this)" onclick="CheckMe(this);document.all.form1.city.value=this.innerText">
                            <label>
                                lumb</label></div>
                        <div class="link_record0" onmouseover="hiLight(this)" onclick="CheckMe(this);document.all.form1.city.value=this.innerText">
                            <label>
                                luppy</label></div>
                    </div>
                </div>
            </td>
            <td>
                <input type="hidden" value="Please Select" name="city">
                <input type="submit" value="ok">
            </td>
        </tr>
    </table>
    </form>
</body>
</html>


ListSearch.css:

BODY {
FONT: 12px
}
TD {
FONT: 12px
}
DIV {
FONT: 12px
}
LABEL {
PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 4px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 3px; HEIGHT: 19px
}
.link_box {
CURSOR: default; TEXT-ALIGN: left;
}
.link_head {
BORDER-RIGHT: 2px inset; BORDER-TOP: 2px inset; BORDER-LEFT: 2px inset; WIDTH: 100%;
BORDER-BOTTOM: 2px inset; HEIGHT: 23px
}
.link_text {
PADDING-LEFT: 2px; BACKGROUND: #fff
}
.link_arrow0 {
BORDER-RIGHT: 2px outset; BORDER-TOP: 2px outset; BACKGROUND: buttonface;
FONT: 14px marlett; BORDER-LEFT: 2px outset; WIDTH: 22px;
BORDER-BOTTOM: 2px outset; HEIGHT: 19px; TEXT-ALIGN: center
}
.link_arrow1 {
BORDER-RIGHT: buttonshadow 1px solid; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px;
BORDER-TOP: buttonshadow 1px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 2px;
BACKGROUND: buttonface; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; FONT: 14px marlett;
BORDER-LEFT: buttonshadow 1px solid; WIDTH: 22px; PADDING-TOP: 2px;
BORDER-BOTTOM: buttonshadow 1px solid; HEIGHT: 19px; TEXT-ALIGN: center
}
.link_value {
BORDER-RIGHT: 1px solid; BORDER-TOP: 1px solid; FILTER: alpha(opacity:0);
VISIBILITY: hidden; OVERFLOW-X: hidden; OVERFLOW: auto; BORDER-LEFT: 1px solid;
BORDER-BOTTOM: 1px solid; POSITION: absolute
}
.link_record0 {
BORDER-TOP: #eee 1px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 2px; BACKGROUND: #fff;
WIDTH: 100%; COLOR: #000; HEIGHT: 20px
}
.link_record1 {
BORDER-TOP: #047 1px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 2px; BACKGROUND: #058;
WIDTH: 100%; COLOR: #fe0; HEIGHT: 20px
}


The sample is based on native code. I plan to build it by ASP.Net Ajax ScriptControl model in the future.

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