AutoComplete TextBox Control

Question

I want to have a textbox control that suggests and append values from a database in a Windows application with C# 2008 and LINQ.

I do it with a combobox but I can't do it with a textbox.

How do I do it?

Answer 1

This might not be the best way to do things, but should work:

 this.textBox1.AutoCompleteMode = AutoCompleteMode.SuggestAppend;  this.textBox1.AutoCompleteSource = AutoCompleteSource.CustomSource;  private void textBox1_TextChanged(object sender, EventArgs e) {     TextBox t = sender as TextBox;     if (t != null)     {         //say you want to do a search when user types 3 or more chars         if (t.Text.Length >= 3)         {             //SuggestStrings will have the logic to return array of strings either from cache/db             string[] arr = SuggestStrings(t.Text);              AutoCompleteStringCollection collection = new AutoCompleteStringCollection();             collection.AddRange(arr);              this.textBox1.AutoCompleteCustomSource = collection;         }     } } 

Answer 2

Check out the AutoCompleteSource, AutoCompleteCustomSource and AutoCompleteMode properties.

textBox1.AutoCompleteMode = AutoCompleteMode.Suggest;
textBox1.AutoCompleteSource = AutoCompleteSource.CustomSource;
AutoCompleteStringCollection col = new AutoCompleteStringCollection();
col.Add("Foo");
col.Add("Bar");
textBox1.AutoCompleteCustomSource = col;

Note that the designer allows you to do that without writing any code...