ASP.NET Ajax Beta 2
After spending an hour pulling my hair out over the new AJAX.Net Beta 2, I’ve finally gotten my AutoCompleteExtender working like it used to under Atlas. The problem for most people is the complete lack of VB.Net examples on the internet. This is the only one that I know of. I’m going to assume you’ve uninstalled Atlas and now have the new Beta 2 of AJAX.Net installed. I’ll also assume you’ve made the web.config changes as well.
In Atlas, your code used to look like this:
Well, now the properties are tied to the control itself and certain properties have been changed or removed. The control is now “Enabled” by default, so that property is now invalid. The DropDownPanelID (which in this instance pointed to a named tag) has been replaced with CompletionListElementID and can be set in the code behind for the page. The other signifiant change is that the webservice that is caled must be tagged as a [ScriptService]. So, how do you get back on track?
First off, our code (changed from above) looks like this now:
You’ll notice we’ve condensed the properties into the control and removed the DropDownPanelID, which we’ll assign in the code-behind using the new property CompletionListElementID. Why in the code behind? Because you have to pass the control’s ClientID now and not the control’s name. So, let’s look at the code behind.. in the Page Load specifically:
aceGroupNames.CompletionListElementID = divGroupNames.ClientId
Almost there… all that’s left is modifying our webservice which used to look like this:
And now, we’re going to add the [ScriptService] tags or else it won’t work.. trust me. I’m saving someone a LOT of time right here (add the text in yellow, nothing else is changed):
Well, that’s it. What a frustrating mess. I’ll build this into a project later and add it for download.