Call an external WCF service with Auto Complete Extender in ASP.Net

Hi All,

I was facing a problem to call an external wcf service method for the ajax auto complete extender in asp.net. I just got a solution so sharing with you guys.

Problem: An external WCF service provide the list of Employee. Want to use auto complete extender text box to just enter initials of name of Employee and full Employee name will display.

Solution: Take a Text box ,AutoCompleteExtender and a hidden field(if you need to store the Employee code in database).

In aspx.cs: Create an [Web Method] in the file to call the external wcf service to retrive the list of Employee.
use CreateAutoComplete method of AutoCompleteExtender to get the data in desired format.
Exa: string employee = AutoCompleteExtender.CreateAutoCompleteItem(string.Format("{0} {1}", employee.FirstName, employee.LastName), employee.EmployeeCode)
and Return employee for the WebMethod.

In aspx: Assign the attribute of AutoCompleteExtender as below:

ServiceMethod="[WebMethodName]" ServicePath="path of aspx page which contain WebMethod" TargetControlID="id of Textbox" OnClientItemSelected="call a javascript method to assign the employee code value to hidden field"(if required).

In your external wcf service you can call a store procedure which takes PreFixText as input and return the List of employee who have prefixtext in their full names.

Thanks,
Avinash Srivastava

Tags: ASP.NET4.0