I needed AutoComplete functionality in an ASP.NET MVC Web Application. The beauty of jQuery is the number of plug-ins that are available, such as a jQuery AutoComplete Plug-In.
I will provide sample code at a later time, but suffice to say that you can download the jQuery AutoComplete Plug-In here and use it seemlessly from within your MVC Web Applications. I cannot compare it to other AutoComplete Plug-Ins, but let's just say that this one works really well and is very simple.
The jQuery AutoComplete Plug-In Description is as follows:
"Autocomplete an input field to enable users quickly finding and selecting some value, leveraging searching and filtering.
By giving an autocompleted field focus or entering something into it, the plugin starts searching for matching entries and displays a list of values to choose from. By entering more characters, the user can filter down the list to better matches.
This can be used to enter previous selected values, eg. for tags, to complete an address, eg. enter a city name and get the zip code, or maybe enter email addresses from an addressbook.
Both local and remote data can be used: Local is good for small datasets (like an addressbook with 50 entries), remote is necessary for big datasets, like a database with hundreds or millions of entries to select from."
It also allows you to bundle up other field values for more context sensitive autocompletion:
$("#states").autocomplete(url, {
extraParams: {
country: function() { return $("#country").val(); }
}
});
Very nice.
Reminds me of the ContextSensitiveAutoCompleteExtender in the Contextual Autocomplete Guidance Bundle that is part of the Web Client Software Factory.