AutoCompleteBox: Different color boxes

[John]

Hey Telerik!

How would I customize the boxes in a AutoCompleteBox to be different colors?  A simple idea would be to have a list of objects with a text property and color property.  The boxes could be a certain color based off the color property.

Thanks

[Stefan]

Hello John,

Thank you for writing.

To customize the tokens in the AutoCompleteBox, you should use the TextBoxFormatting event. The following article describes how to do that: http://www.telerik.com/help/winforms/editors-autocompletetextbox-formatting-blocks.html.

I hope that you find this information useful.
 
Greetings,
Stefan
the Telerik team

[John]

Stefan,

Thanks for the link.  I was hoping to use an object class to be able to add the text blocks.  How would I add the text blocks as a custom class.  The only way I see to add blocks is with  RadAutoCompleteBox1.Text = "foo;bar;"

Thanks

[Stefan]

Hello John,

There is no way to add tokens to the control. If you want to use custom object, you have to create a custom token with the desired information, and use the CreateTextBlock event, to replace the standard token with yours. This approach is described here: http://www.telerik.com/help/winforms/editors-autocompletetextbox-creating-custom-blocks.html.

Alternatively, you can just store your item's text and desired color in a simple dictionary, and use the formatting event to pull the value from the dictionary and color the box as specified:

protected override void OnLoad(EventArgs e)
{

    base.OnLoad(e);

    items.Add("text1", Color.Red);
    items.Add("text2", Color.Green);
    items.Add("text3", Color.Blue);
    items.Add("text4", Color.Yellow);
}

Dictionary<string, Color> items = new Dictionary<string, Color>();

void radAutoCompleteBox1_TextBlockFormatting(object sender, TextBlockFormattingEventArgs e)
{
    TokenizedTextBlockElement token = e.TextBlock as TokenizedTextBlockElement;
    Color c;
    if (token != null && items.TryGetValue(e.TextBlock.Text.Trim(), out c))
    {
        token.GradientStyle = Telerik.WinControls.GradientStyles.Solid;
        token.BackColor = c;
    }
}

I hope this helps.

All the best,
Stefan
the Telerik team