Introduction
If you are a .Net developer, you may notice that there is an important difference
(in terms of features) between the WinForm ComboBox and the WebForm DropDownList. ComboBox of WinForm allows user to input custom
item if the user cannot find the item in the combo list.
However, this feature is omitted in the DropDownList of WebForm.
In order to make WebForm DropDownList as flexible as WinForm ComboBox, I decide to build
a DropdownTextBox for WebForm with the feature similar to the WinForm ComboBox.
Using the code
You can download the zip file above and use it immediately. The zip file contains a demo web page and source code.
As the code is quite straight forward, I do not want to write a lengthy explanation
here. If you want to see a live demo before you download it, you can go to
my other blog.
Essentially, the DropdownTextBox is built from the combination of a TextBox, a ListBox and a PopupControlExtender of the AjaxControlToolkit. The demo uses AjaxControlToolkit for .Net4.0 but AjaxControlToolkit for .Net3.5 also works correctly.
In my demo project, the control IDs are TextBox1, ListBox1 and PopupControlExtender1. In order to make the DropdownTextBox works, you also need to add the following codebehind:
Private Sub ListBox1_SelectedIndexChanged(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles ListBox1.SelectedIndexChanged
TextBox1.Text = ListBox1.SelectedValue
Me.PopupControlExtender1.Commit(ListBox1.SelectedValue)
End Sub
Points of Interest
Both TextBox and DropDownList are very useful in ASP.Net development. This DropdownTextBox
is a combination of the two useful controls so that user can either type in
custom item or select an item from the dropdown list.
History
This is the first version.