long list in dropdown box?

[trevorjdaniel]

Hi,

bit of background...

I run the taxi fare calculator website Taxi Cab Fare Calculator - Get a Fare Price! The site enables people in the UK to work out roughly what their taxi fare should be based on official local authority rates.

At the moment, it only allows you to enter addresses BUT I want to be able to add the option to choose from Airports & Railway Stations.

Ideally, I would like to offer a dropdown box to choose from address/airport/train station.. if someone chose railway station a dynamic search box would appear and as they start typing the name in it starts to make suggestions. Just like the Google Search page box.

Doesn't sound too tricky so far...

BUT, and this is my questions I suppose.... The list of train stations is 15,000 items long.

Do you think this is possible to do with such a long list of items? Do you think the performance would be good enough?

Has anyone tried doing this with such a long list of items please? Any tips or comments would be very much appreciated.

Thanks

Trev

 

[r3plica]

I have done this before using ajax and web services.
I simply made it retrieve the list based on the first 2 characters that were typed in the box, that way the results were drstically reduced.
It was a long time ago that I did this, but I think I can dig out some code.

 

[r3plica]

Ahh, the code I have was for .net 2.0 and isn't applicable to 3.5 now, so not sure if it will help. I also used the Telerik Rad Controls too, so that would just confuse you anyway.

Just google search for auto complete ajax textboxes and you should find what you are looking for