Auto Complete Searching - asp.net

I am working with asp.net, i want some suggessions to implement search functionality with auto complete. Now i am using sql server as the backend in that i am retrieving 4 columns from three tables and sending those as parameters for searching. Now my problem is how to send those four fields at a time for sarching. And how to write the code for searching based ob those fields.
Please help me to solve this problem.
Thanks in advance...

Use AJAX Autocomplete
http://www.asp.net/AJAX/AjaxControlToolkit/Samples/AutoComplete/AutoComplete.aspx

Question is not very clear but what i can sugeest to get the best performance if data is not that huge you can cache data in async mode while page load and use ajax auto complete to give user best experience.

Related

which autocomplete get data from both local array and server?

I want to use autocomplete in a aspx form. Requriment is autocmplete should first check for data on local (common data will be loaded with page in javascript array). If not found than it should request the server database and search the data there.
There are many plugins, scripts and widgets avaialable. Please guide me which is best and easy to use in .aspx and also that works on both ends (first it should check on client and if not found then it should go to server).
How much data are you caching in a JS array? We use Telerik controls to do AutoComplete and haven't had any problems with performance using an AJAX/WebService call to populate the list.
I'm sure you can achieve the same results with a free or homegrown solution as well. I'm just wondering if it's worth creating both a client and server side model for this.

ASP.NET Long Process and Sending updates to Browser

I've asked this before but I was hoping for another answer and perhaps some code samples because I've been having a difficult time with this. I have an asp.net page. The user hits the "Run" button and I have code IN AN ASSEMBLY, not in the APP_CODE folder that is called and runs a long process that moves product info from a file into the database. While the user waits, I would like them to see status updates like what product the import process in on and status info. I'm assuming I'd break off into another thread and use Ajax but I have no idea how to do this. Some code samples would be very helpful, thanks.
A simpler way to do this without needing to go into multi threading (which can cause all sorts of nasty, hard to track down bugs) is to use AsyncResults in .NET and AJAX which allow you to query a process.
A good example to start you off can be found here.
found it by using HttpResponse.Flush

What does the __VIEWSTATE hold?

I'm sorry for maybe making such a basic question but in ASP.NET websites what does the __VIEWSTATE input field represent?
Also, is there any way to compute it's value (based on the values of other form fields)?
EDIT
I understand that __VIEWSTATE, as the name suggests, maintains the values of form field values in webpages however what I'm interested in knowing is how this state (the string) is generated. If I base64_decode any __VIEWSTATE string all I see is a bunch of cryptic HTML.
Is there any way to better understand what exactly is being encoded? I've searched on past questions and I've found some tools that can do this like this one, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to work.
The reason I'm asking this is because I've access to a web service API that gives me most of the values I need to work with. However I also need an additional field that is only available on the last stage of the form. I already contacted the web service provider but unfortunately and they're not going to update their API so soon. I was hoping I could prefill the form initial values using the web service data and then calculate the __VIEWSTATE to access the last field that shows up on the last stage of the form, it would make the whole process a lot faster.
Not sure if I made myself clear enough though...
Paul Wilson has a very good article: ViewState: All You Wanted to Know
VIEWSTATE can be deserialized with the LosFormatter class.
A quick Google search answers the question:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms972976.aspx
First sentence:
Microsoft® ASP.NET view state, in a
nutshell, is the technique used by an
ASP.NET Web page to persist changes to
the state of a Web Form across
postbacks.
If you really want to understand it well, see Dave Reed's article about ViewState.
Do take a look at the biter script posted at http://forums.techarena.in/windows-software/1329157.htm.
That script shows how to set up and use __ViewState and other .NET variables.
That script logs into a .NET site, and gets stock values, without going thru a browser. Instead of user doing it manually, the script does it programmatically.
What do you mean by compute it's value?
Assume that it is a compressed (actually Base64 encoded) pair of your form fields/values in text form, which gets serialized into server side objects for you to work with.
The easiest way of doing this in Razor is putting this on a view:
#{
throw new Exception();
}

Suggestions on which ASP.NET control to use?

I've received a project for internal use. My application has to store about 100 rows of meta data of a game and each row has about 15 fields maximum. Fields can be game name, game category, maker, source code path, etc. I will most likely have to join about 5-10 tables for each row of record. Only a few people are using it and will receive very little hits. Speed performance is not a much of an issue. The rows of data I have to present must be sortable and searchable
My current solution is to use ASP.NET's GridView control with ASP.NET's AJAX UpdatePanel to give it that ajax feel. I'm thinking of using LINQ-to-SQL as my data access layer. I'm thinking of building my own custom search engine but if there's an existing control that has this feature already, i would prefer to use that; anyone know of such control exist? Anyways what do you guys think?
Update #1:
I'm looking into creating a DynamicData website. Any have thoughts on that?
Use ext.js!
Look at the Grid Samples, its a very shallow learning curve and provides you with amazing results in little to no time.
http://extjs.com/products/extjs/
Basically, you expose your data via a web service (asmx or WCF, your choice), throw the Ext.Js grid onto your html/aspx page and point it at your webservice. Configure the control for things like sorting/searching/expanding/grouping/paging etc (use the api reference http://extjs.com/deploy/dev/docs/).
ASP.NET Dynamic Data looks really cool, particularly for sites where you've got:
lots of data
not a lot of worries about performance
no / little desire to skin / design the site
no / little desire to extend existing / write new functionality.
So I'd say that's a good match for your project.
Gridview is your best bet. It's so powerful if you know how to use it correctly. It does automatic sorting and if you can code pretty well you can get the data to be filterable(if that's a word). It also makes the Connection to the database for you....so in my opinion, you can't beat the gridview when it comes to reports like that.

ASP.NET: Looking for solution to solve XSS

We got a long-running website where XSS lurks. The problem comes from that some developers directly - without using HtmlEncode/Decode() - retrieve Request["sth"] to do the process, putting on the web.
I wonder if there is any mechanism like HTTPModule to help us HtmlEncode() all the items in a Http request to avoid XSS to some extent.
Appreciate for any suggestion.
Rgds,
Ricky
The problem is not retrieving Request data without HTML-encoding. In fact that's perfectly correct. You should not encode any text until the final output stage when you spit it into an HTML page.
Trying to blanket-encode incoming parameters, whether that's HTML-encoding or SQL-encoding, is totally the wrong thing. It may hide XSS holes in your app but it does not fix them. You will still have a hole if you output content that hasn't come from parameters, or has been processed since then. Meanwhile the automatic encoding will fill your database with multiply-escaped & crud.
You need to fix the output stage, that's where the problem lies.
Like bobince said, this is an output problem, not an input problem. If you can isolate where this data is being output on the page, you could create a Filter and add it to the Response object. This filter would isolate the areas that are common output and then HtmlEncode them.

Resources