Home / Community & Support / Developer Productivity Tools Forums / ASP.NET AJAX > ComboBox > RadComboBox EmptyMessage on page load

• Philip

  Posted on Apr 13, 2009 (permalink)

  Can someone please tell me how to enable the emptymessage to show in a radgridcombobox on page load?
  
  I am binding the data from a datasource, and can not seem to get the "Please Select..." to show on page load.
  
  I have tried setting the me.radcombobox1.selectedindex to -1 or .text =  me.radcombobox1.emptymessage in every place I could think of.
  
  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

  Reply

• Veselin Vasilev Veselin Vasilev

  Posted on Apr 13, 2009 (permalink)

  Hello Philip,
  
  The EmptyMessage property can be used when the AllowCustomText property is set to True.
  
  More information is available in our help topic: Appearance and Styling > Using the EmptyMessage Property
  
  Regards,
  Veselin Vasilev
  the Telerik team

  
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• Jon Master

  Posted on Apr 18, 2009 (permalink)

  Hi Philip sorry to hijack your thread but I'm having the same issue....
  
  No disrespect to the developers at Telerik as in the main it's a great product but this is a rubbish situation.
  
  Looking back at the forums, it seems that for ages (years!) people have been asking to be able to have a drop down box that is initially showing a blank top item so it looks like this
  
  ---> 
         Value 1
         Value 2
         etc
  
  Now the 'blank' row could have empty text - but you shouldn't have to enable the AllowCustomText property to do it.  Enabling that property is just plain stupid as it results in the user being able to put in any old rubbish and then find that the form fails validation... (given that the drop down will normally be bound to an INT in the database.
  
  Hopefully I'm wrong and have just made a complete arse out of myself but if not please come up with a decent workaround.  Apologies in advance if I am wrong ;)
  
  Also please put a full blown solution for this in the pipline for a future release (sooner the better).
  
  Regards,
  
  Jon

  Reply

• Atanas Korchev Atanas Korchev

  Posted on Apr 20, 2009 (permalink)

  Hi Jon,
  
  We usually recommend this approach when in need of "choose value" item in RadComboBox.
  I have logged this as a feature suggestion (ShowEmptyText not to require AllowCustomText).
  
  Regards,
  Albert
  the Telerik team

  
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• Jon Master

  Posted on Apr 23, 2009 (permalink)

  Hi Albert,
  
  Thanks for that - I'll have a look at this today now that I'm back on the programming.
  
  That is a very good looking Panel, you should look at using some of the features in that for the round panel control that you'll be adding sometime in the future.  Especially if you can integrate the heading and heading image functionality into the one control!
  
  Best Regards,
  
  Jon

  Reply

• Servando

  Posted on Jun 19, 2009 (permalink)

  I've just on the same problem, and I need also to unselect an item (usually it's done setting selectedIndex=-1). So I need to append  an "empty item"!!!
  
  I've noted also that setting the selectedValue to an unexisting one there is no reaction from de RadComboBox (no error, no unselection...).
  

  Reply

• Veselin Vasilev Veselin Vasilev

  Posted on Jun 24, 2009 (permalink)

  Hello Servando,
  
  There are two cases here:
  
  1. ReadOnly mode - setting the SelectedIndex to -1 does not work because you should always have a selected item in this mode. This is how the standard DropDownList control works.
  
  2. AllowCustomText is True - then the user can type anything in the combo input area. To clear the selection I suggest calling the ClearSelection() method of the combo and set its Text property to string.Empty.
  
  
  Kind regards,
  Veselin Vasilev
  the Telerik team

  
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• Jason

  Posted on Jan 27, 2010 (permalink)

  I just want to chime in and agree with the other Telerik users here that have the same problem I have. You should not have to mark AllowCustomText for the EmptyMessage to be available. Regardless of why it is like this, it should not be. Please fix in future version

  Reply

• Simon Simon

  Posted on Jan 28, 2010 (permalink)

  Hi Jason,

  
  

  Thank you for your input.

  
  

  We have this feature logged and will implement it in future versions of RadComboBox.

  
  All the best,
  Simon
  the Telerik team

  
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• Stephen Braich

  Posted on Feb 11, 2010 (permalink)

  I agree with the others.  Quite honestly this should be like the first feature any 3rd party combo box control should offer.  It is ridiculous that I should have to do a radcombo.Items.Add(new RadComboBoxItem("[Select Something]").  

  Reply

• Veselin Vasilev Veselin Vasilev

  Posted on Feb 16, 2010 (permalink)

  Hi guys,
  
  We already added this as a feature request in our public issue tracking system. Please go vote for it here.
  
  Greetings,
  Veskoni
  the Telerik team

  
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• Vance Smith

  Posted on Jun 6, 2011 (permalink)

  So is this feature availabe yet?

  Reply

• Simon Simon

  Posted on Jun 8, 2011 (permalink)

  Hi Vance,
  
  Unfortunately the feature has not been implemented yet. We are working on some other additions (CheckBox support) and fixes to RadComboBox so it is coming after them.
  
  Regards,
  Simon
  the Telerik team

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• Jason

  Posted on Jun 9, 2011 (permalink)

  It’s obvious that Telerik really only gives lip service to correcting this. Many of us have wanted this for years and it should be an easy fix. They just plain don’t care.....

  Reply

• Jon Master

  Posted on Jun 14, 2011 (permalink)

  Hi Simon,
  
  I'm just working on some issues with some old combo boxes of mine.  I've come across an issue whereby my validation fails because of having to use this awful work around and it's something that I'm sure that others have come across.
  
  Basically because of the work around you have to provide extra validation on each and every combo box - not just the required fields.  The non-required combos need to be checked to ensure that they have a valid entry as opposed to some user typed in text.  Also the required combos need the same check - most of the time.
  
  Come on, for the sake of a very simple addition to the combo box you'd save us all a lot of extra effort.  To make things simpler, create a new EmptyMessageString var or something to handle the new functionality so nothing breaks.
  
  Please try and whip this in for the July update - it's a simple addition!!!  And if you can't include it in time PLEASE add it in the next incremental update.
  
  Regards,
  
  Jon

  Reply

• Simon Simon

  Posted on Jun 15, 2011 (permalink)

  Hi Jason, Jon,
  
  The reason we were postponing this fix/feature was that we wanted to make other major refactoring of the whole 'empty message' idea and not simply change the way the message is rendered. Additionally this would take a considerable amount of time and that's why we couldn't fit it in our plans. 
  
  Still both of you are right - we have been holding off this fix/feature for quite some time and it is indeed useful and even required in some setups. We will change our plans and implement just what the PITS items says for the next Q (Q2 2011).
  
  Regards,
  Simon
  the Telerik team

  Browse the vast support resources we have to jump start your development with RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX. See how to integrate our AJAX controls seamlessly in SharePoint 2007/2010 visiting our common SharePoint portal.

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• Jon Master

  Posted on Jun 16, 2011 (permalink)

  Hi Simon,
  
  Sounds great!  I look forward to seeing it.  I'd say that roughly half of the drop downs in my setup are cascading and they all require the empty message so this will be very well received!
  
  Best Regards,
  
  Jon

  Reply

• Cmdr. Beavis

  Posted on Feb 7, 2012 (permalink)

  "2. AllowCustomText is True - then the user can type anything in the combo input area. To clear the selection I suggest calling the ClearSelection() method of the combo and set its Text property tostring.Empty."
  
  Just wanted to say that the above worked perfectly for me.  Before I knew about 'EmptyMessage' et al, I was setting the Text property to a hard-coded string, which affected the control's behavior in a negative way.  (didn't highlight said text so that I could type in something new and have the existing/highlighted text go away.)
  
  Thanks!
  -Scott

  Reply

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