Best way to retrieve company and contacts in asp web page

[Hfnet]

Hi, I have a website in asp vb .net 3.5

The user needs to select a company, then a contact within the company.

As the company list is over 800 records, I originally did a databound dropdownlist and populated it from a SQL view, quickly found out about the load tines and changed the code to speed up loading. This was ok, and when the user selected the company and clicked button1 it populated the contacts in a second dropdownlist.

To try and make it even quicker I have today changed the company list to a textbox with Ajax autocompleteextender, which populates the company list as the user types. when they click on the matching company it again populates the contact dropdownlist, however this does not work in Android browser, instead it gives an error 400 verb.

I am sure there must be a better way to select company and contact, if anyone has some suggestions and maybe examples of a working site with this sort of selection, I would be very grateful.

Thanks.

 

[jbenson001]

I would have a search text box for the company name. This way the user can type in a partial company name and then fill the company ddl from that.

 

[jmeckley]

you're on the right track with an ajax autocomplete feature. this is the best approach given # of requests vs speed of requests vs what information the user requires.

400 error code is a Bad Request "The request could not be understood by the server due to malformed syntax. The client SHOULD NOT repeat the request without modifications."

other browsers are probably more relaxed so you only see this with Android. using firebug/fiddler or another http sniffer you can monitor the traffic sent/received and inspect the headers and content to verify the request is well formed.

Jason Meckley
Programmer

faq855-7190
faq732-7259

 

[Hfnet]

Thanks for the replies, much appreciated