I need edit-combo functionality, variable choice-list speed

[chadbrown]

Re: I need edit-combo functionality, variable choice-list speed

On the auto suggest you can choose not to do the callback until a certain amount of characters have been entered and set a time as well to slow down the callback. I think there is also an option in the edit combo to perform the lookup atrendertime which I think makes it just do one callback and not numerous.

[gaby_h]

Re: I need edit-combo functionality, variable choice-list speed

See Selwy's reply in #4 http://msgboard.alphasoftware.com/al...ored-Procedure

[christappan]

In lots and lots of places in our application, we select a individual's name using an "edit-combo" box, which allows the user to type "ad" and it filters names out to adams, adkins, etc. It also "fills-in" the individual ID in a separate, hidden control, and that's the value actually stored with the record. All this is basic, out-of-the-box functionality of Alpha Five's "Edit-Combo" lookup feature, which is great. Note that I'm not using this control to allow users to type and save whatever they want, which is another functionality of the edit-combo control type.

It's occurred to me (just now, unbelievably), that every time someone starts to type an individual's name into a record, when searching by individual, etc, that if the user types "adam" into the edit-combo box, there are callbacks to the server and queries run:
SELECT Individual_Name, Individual_ID from Individuals WHERE Individual_Name LIKE 'a%', then
SELECT Individual_Name, Individual_ID from Individuals WHERE Individual_Name LIKE 'ad%', then
SELECT Individual_Name, Individual_ID from Individuals WHERE Individual_Name LIKE 'ada%', then
SELECT Individual_Name, Individual_ID from Individuals WHERE Individual_Name LIKE 'adam%', then

This is, obviously, ridiculous.

Ideally, you could switch the edit-combo to pull its choices from a variable, maybe even a session variable. This is what we do with our Supervisor and Case Manager names/IDs on similar dropdown and checkbox controls throughout our application. A dropdown for 900+ individuals, though, even if you can jump to the first letter by pressing it, is less than user-friendly. But the A5 out-of-the-box edit-combo essentially loses its functionality when set to a variable--it only filters on the first letter of the user input and it has no fill-in option to fill-in the ID number of the individual, which is what I want to store. At that point, it has less value than a dropdown box.

I tried working with a separate calculated field and with an OnBlur event that looked up the Individual's ID, each with some success, but the edit combo filtered only on the first letter typed in the box, and if that's all I can get I might as well use a standard dropdown box.

Does anyone have any good solutions to this need?