Custom Filtering

The DevExpress ASP.NET MVC Autocomplete Combo Box (ComboBoxExtension) editor enables you to implement custom filtering logic using the ASPxClientComboBox.ItemFiltering and ASPxClientComboBox.CustomHighlighting client events and a delegate specified by the CustomFiltering property.

In this demo, the first combo box illustrates how to filter items by several words and multiple columns simultaneously on the server side using the delegate specified by the CustomFiltering property. If an end-user types a search phrase, the editor dynamically divides the phrase (ListEditCustomFilteringEventArgs.Filter) into individual words, creates a filter expression (ListEditCustomFilteringEventArgs.FilterExpression), finds each word in each column and highlights them (ListEditCustomFilteringEventArgs.CustomHighlighting).

Using the second combo box, end-users can filter items that contain diacritic characters (German cities) on the client side. The editor uses the ASPxClientComboBox.ItemFiltering property for each item as the user types the search text and replaces diacritic characters with Latin ones if required. The indexOf function filters the editor items that match the filter criteria. The ASPxClientComboBox.CustomHighlighting property allows specifying rules (regular expression or filter condition) according to which the editor highlights the filter results by the ASPxClientListEditCustomHighlightingEventArgs.highlighting property.