Look-up ComboBox

• Download demo project - 8.58 Kb
• Download source - 2.82 Kb

Introduction

.NET Framework 1.1 has a wide variety of visual components available for Windows Forms applications. Anyhow there is no ComboBox component with the possibility of look-up data defined in the Items property (or bound DataSource) of ComboBox. This article describes a look-up ComboBox with the ability to find an appropriate item in ComboBox items.

Features

The main good feature of the ComboBox is that the ComboBox has a property AllowTypeAllSymbols. If the property is true you can type any symbols in the ComboBox textbox. The items will be selected according to the first correctly entered symbol. For example, if the ComboBox holds "Item 1", "Item 2", "Test 1", "Test 2", "Combo", "Box" and if you enter "it", Item 1 will be selected. Again, if you enter "itm", "Item 1" will be selected. This way you can continue to enter any amount of symbols.

If AllTypeAllSymbols is false, you will be able to enter only those symbols, that are defined in the string of Items (or bound DateSource) property. For this example you will be able to enter only i, t, c, b as a first symbol. If you enter "i" as a first symbol - "Item 1" will be automatically selected, the second symbol can only be "t", you will not be able to enter any other symbol. "Item 2" will be selected only if you type the whole string "Item 2". The demo application shows this functionality.

Using the code

You can just add lookupcombobbox.dll to your project and use it for any Windows Forms application.