This other SO question asks about an autocomplete textbox in WPF. Several people have built these, and one of the answers given there suggests this codeproject article.
But I've not found any WPF Autocomplete Textbox that compares with the WinForms autocomplete textbox. The codeproject sample works, sort of, ...
...but
So, my question:
*Does anyone have a FREE WPF AutoComplete textbox that works, and provides a quality UI experience?*
ANSWER
Here's how I did it:
.0. get the WPF Toolkit
.1. run the MSI for the WPF Toolkit
.2. Within Visual Studio, Drag/drop from the toolbox - specifically the Data Visualization group - into the UI Designer. It looks like this in the VS toolbox:
If you don't want to use the designer, hand-craft the xaml. It looks like this:
<toolkit:AutoCompleteBox
ToolTip="Enter the path of an assembly."
x:Name="tbAssembly" Height="27" Width="102"
Populating="tbAssembly_Populating" />
...where the toolkit namespace is mapped this way:
xmlns:toolkit="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Controls;assembly=System.Windows.Controls.Input.Toolkit"
.3. Provide the code for the Populating
event. Here's what I used:
private void tbAssembly_Populating(object sender, System.Windows.Controls.PopulatingEventArgs e)
{
string text = tbAssembly.Text;
string dirname = Path.GetDirectoryName(text);
if (Directory.Exists(Path.GetDirectoryName(dirname)))
{
string[] files = Directory.GetFiles(dirname, "*.*", SearchOption.TopDirectoryOnly);
string[] dirs = Directory.GetDirectories(dirname, "*.*", SearchOption.TopDirectoryOnly);
var candidates = new List<string>();
Array.ForEach(new String[][] { files, dirs }, (x) =>
Array.ForEach(x, (y) =>
{
if (y.StartsWith(dirname, StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase))
candidates.Add(y);
}));
tbAssembly.ItemsSource = candidates;
tbAssembly.PopulateComplete();
}
}
It works, just the way you'd expect. It feels professional. There are none of the anomalies that the codeproject control exhibits. This is what it looks like:
Thanks to Matt for the pointer to the WPF toolkit.
The newest drop of the WPF Toolkit includes an AutoCompleteBox. It's a free set of controls from Microsoft, some of which will be included in .NET 4.