Grouping in ASP.NET MVC AutoComplete Control

16 Feb 20241 minute to read

The AutoComplete supports wrapping nested elements into a group based on different categories. The category of each list item can be mapped through the groupBy field in the data table. The group header is displayed as both inline and fixed headers. The fixed group header content is updated dynamically on scrolling the suggestion list with its category value.

In the following sample, vegetables are grouped according on its category using groupBy field.

@Html.EJS().AutoComplete("Vegetable").Placeholder("Select a Vegetable").PopupHeight("200px").DataSource((IEnumerable<object>)ViewBag.data).Fields(new Syncfusion.EJ2.DropDowns.AutoCompleteFieldSettings { Value = "Vegetable", GroupBy = "Category" }).Render()
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc;
using WebApplication1.Models;

namespace WebApplication1.Controllers
{
    public class AutoCompleteController : Controller
    {
       public ActionResult Index()
        {
            ViewBag.data = new Vegetables().VegetablesList();
            return View();
        }     
    }
}

Customization

The grouping header is also provided with customization option. This allows custom designing using the groupTemplate property for both inline and fixed headers as referred here:

Group Template support to AutoComplete.

NOTE

View Sample in GitHub.