Do we have Multicolumn Combobox with filtering in Telerik WPF kit? - ComboBox

Sandeep

9 posts

Member since:
Dec 2012

Posted 07 Dec 2012 Link to this post

Hi,

We are looking for a control which we can use for searching through multiple columns in a combo box. Use case is...as user types into the combo box, the data in the combo box should be auto filtered and when user selects a row using up/down keys and press enter, current row should be selected.

I can see that Telerik has a similar control for winforms but I am wondering if we have similar control for WPF too.

In our application we uses controls from 2 different vendors, where one vendor is telerik. I will check the availability of the similar control with other vendor too. But if Terelik can provide us such a inbuild control then it will be easy for us to move to Telerik only controls in future.

Thanks,
SK

Vladi

Admin

749 posts

Posted 12 Dec 2012 Link to this post

Hi Sandeep,

Thank you for contacting us.

I am not sure what you mean by searching through multiple columns in a combo box but in our Q3 2012 release of RadControls we introduced a new RadAutoCompleteBox control which has a built-in filtering, virtualization and auto complete functionality that could be useful in your scenario. You can see our demos for RadAutoCompleteBox here and our online documentation here.

It is worth mentioning that it is possible to customize the filtering feature of the control and change the way items are filtered.

If you have any other questions feel free to write to us again.

Kind regards,
Vladi
the Telerik team

Explore the entire Telerik portfolio by downloading Telerik DevCraft Ultimate.

Sandeep

9 posts

Member since:
Dec 2012

Posted 12 Dec 2012 Link to this post

Hi Vladi,

Search through multiple coumns means...if we are using a grid in a dropdown to display for e.g "Person" data in 4 columns (say Name, Age, Address, PhoneNumber) and when user start tying in to search one person then we have to search the user input text across all 4 columns displayed (i.e. Name/Age.Address/PhoneNumber) using the "contains" criteria and realtime filter the list displayed.

I have tried AutoCompleteBox as well. it seems that using this control we might be able to search across multiple columns at same time when user is typing But if user don't want to type and want to directly select using mouse then this control doesn't have a drop down button attached which the user can use to view the list and select item using mouse.

Is there any way to add DropDownButton in this AutoCompleteBox?

Thanks,
Sandeep

Vladi

Admin

749 posts

Posted 12 Dec 2012 Link to this post

Hello Sandeep,

As I mentioned before you could customize the FilteringBehavior of the control which could be used to achieve the desired behavior. It is possible to customize it in a way that it returns the hole collection from the ItemsSource and drops the drop down portions of the control when there isn't a match from the filtering and when the control has the focus.

I created and attached a sample project for you showing how to achieve the described customization by creating a custom FilteringBehavior.

Regards,
Vladi
the Telerik team

Explore the entire Telerik portfolio by downloading Telerik DevCraft Ultimate.

AutoCompleteBoxCustomFilteringBehavior.zip

Guy

21 posts

Member since:
Oct 2012

Posted 14 Dec 2012 Link to this post

Sandeep's last question was

"But if user don't want to type and want to directly select using mouse then this control doesn't have a drop down button attached which the user can use to view the list and select item using mouse.
Is there any way to add DropDownButton in this AutoCompleteBox?"

That would be a very useful feature for the RadAutoCompleteBox, seeing as the RadComboBox is unable to provide the custom filtering functions which can be added to the RadAutoCompleteBox via a FilteringBehavior.

Is there a simple way to add a drop down button to the RadAutoCompleteBox?

Vladi

Admin

749 posts

Posted 15 Dec 2012 Link to this post

Hi Guy,

My example shows how to change the FilteringBehavior of the AutoCompleteBox in order to populate the drop down portion of the control with the hole ItemsSource collection which is done in the GotFocus event. You could customize the Template of the control to add a button and move the logic from the GotFocus event to the click event of that button to achieve the desired behavior.

By design in AutoCompleteBox there isn't a button that could be used in the manner described above but with a custom FilteringBehavior it is easily achieved.

Hope this is helpful.

All the best,
Vladi
the Telerik team

Explore the entire Telerik portfolio by downloading Telerik DevCraft Ultimate.

Guy

21 posts

Member since:
Oct 2012

Posted 18 Dec 2012 Link to this post

Hi Vladi

Thanks for this, I hadn't thought about changing the template of the control - that makes a lot of sense. I will give this a try today and see what I can come up with. If its reasonable I will post it here.

Thanks,

Guy

Sandeep

9 posts

Member since:
Dec 2012

Posted 18 Dec 2012 Link to this post

To give this search control a Combo Box look as well as more control to me, I am now creating this control using a Textbox, RadDropDown and a Grid. Hopefully it won't take too long. I created a similar control 5 yrs back in winforms and thought things would have changed over time and might get a build-in control for this functionality.

Thanks Guys for useful discussion and information provided.

Cheers,
SK

Guy

21 posts

Member since:
Oct 2012

Posted 19 Dec 2012 Link to this post

Hi guys

In my efforts to template the control nicely, I have a dropdown icon correctly displayed and responding to clicks. However, I am having trouble opening the RadAutoCompleteBox drop down in code. I assumed that setting IsDropDownOpen to True would open the dropdown, but it closes again immediately. Is there another way to open the dropdown (and keep it open)?

Thanks,

Guy

Vladi

Admin

749 posts

Posted 20 Dec 2012 Link to this post

Hi Guy,

The IsDropDownOpen property currently has an existing issue that causes it to behave strangely. We are aware of this issue and will try to fix it as soon as possible.

As we see this is a scenario that could be useful for many we will do our best to create an example showing how to customize the AutoCompleteBox control and add a drop button that will populate the drop down portion of the control with the hole ItemsSource.

Kind regards,
Vladi
the Telerik team

Explore the entire Telerik portfolio by downloading Telerik DevCraft Ultimate.

Guy

21 posts

Member since:
Oct 2012

Posted 29 Dec 2012 Link to this post

Hi Vladi

Thanks, that would be great to see, and very helpful.

Regards,

Guy

Vladi

Admin

749 posts

Posted 30 Jan 2013 Link to this post

Hi Guy,

We were able to put together a sample project for you showing how to create a drop down button for the RadAutoCompleteBox control.

You can find attached to my response a sample project that shows a solution for achieving the desired behavior. There are other possible solutions but the approach is similar to the one in the attached project. In it the main steps are creating a custom FilteringBehavior for the AutCompleteBox control and also creating a button that will make use of this new FilteringBehavior.

Hope this is helpful.

Regards,
Vladi
the Telerik team

Explore the entire Telerik portfolio by downloading Telerik DevCraft Ultimate.

AutoCompleteOpenWithDropDownButton.zip

Guy

21 posts

Member since:
Oct 2012

Posted 31 Jan 2013 Link to this post

Hi Vladi

That is exceptionally helpful, thank you! With this I've now been able to create an autocomplete combo box with custom filtering... perfect!

Thanks again, the service at Telerik really is amazing.

Regards,

Guy

Azar

2 posts

Member since:
Dec 2013

Posted 03 Dec 2013 Link to this post

Hi

I am looking for the Multicolumn in the RadAutoCompleteBox.
the code showing us that this is having a single column display.
Is this possible to show multiple column in the same?

Please help

Regards
Azar Bhaladar

Vladi

Admin

749 posts

Posted 03 Dec 2013 Link to this post

Hello,

We are not sure what exactly you mean by "Multicolumn in the RadAutoCompleteBox".

If you want to customize the template of the items in the drop down of the control you could create a custom DataTemplate and set it to the DropDownItemTemplate property.

Regards,
Vladi
Telerik

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Bent

1 posts

Member since:
Dec 2011

Posted 13 Nov 2017 Link to this post

To solve this, in the class I use for the items, I created an extra property named "Search" of type string. Then in XAML: TextSearch.TextPath="Search"

The "Search" field is calculated somewhat like this; FirstField + "|" + SecondField.ToString() + ...

I have used "|" as separator here, but try with a separator that isn't expected in the text, e.g. a control character, e.g. tab, if it works.

You can pretty much do anything when calculating the search string, e.g. translate colors to their names, in order to be able to search stuff that otherwise isn't searchable, or otherwise too hard to search for.