DropDownList slow for large number of items

[Andrew]

Hello,

I'm using the Kendo grid (Ajax binding) for some basic CRUD behavior. I'm using three foreign key columns and relying on the GridForeignKey editor for inline editing. Everything is working as expected, except one of the dropdowns contains 8100+ items and is extremely slow to open. If I use a standard dropdown (non-kendo) the list populates quickly, however I haven't been able to match the CSS of the kendo dropdowns so looks very out of place.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Cheers,
Andrew.

[Alexander Popov]

Hi Andrew,

The DropDownList is indeed not the best choice when dealing with huge data sets for a couple of reasons. First, as you already noticed - the performance is not so great, because all items are rendered and this could be quite stressful for older machines and/or browsers. The second reason is poor user experience. Finding a specific item among 8000 others with no means of filtering might be a challenging and even frustrating task. In the current scenario I would recommend using the ComboBox widget in combination with server filtering, thus eliminating both of the possible issues you might have with the DropDownList.

Regards,
Alexander Popov
Telerik

[Kiran]

Hi Alexander,

I tried with ComboBox widget in combination with server filtering as you suggested, still there is no performance improvements, I have around 30,000 records to load in the list, can you suggest is there any other way to solve the performance issue.

Thanks,
Kiran

[Alexander Popov]

Hi Kiran,

Basically, the idea is to send the value of the ComboBox's input along with the widget's read request and return the appropriate data. If no parameter is sent you should either return all items (causing performance issues) or return no items at all.

Regards,
Alexander Popov
Telerik