ASP.NET Core MVC / Razor Pages: Auto-Complete Select

A simple select component sometimes isn't useful with a huge amount of data. ABP Provides a select implementation that works with pagination and server-side search via using Select2. It works with single or multiple choices well.

A screenshot can be shown below.

Single	Multiple

Getting Started

This is a core feature and it's used by the ABP Framework. There is no custom installation or additional packages required.

Usage

A simple usage is presented below.

<select asp-for="Book.AuthorId" 
    class="auto-complete-select"
    data-autocomplete-api-url="/api/app/author"
    data-autocomplete-display-property="name"
    data-autocomplete-value-property="id"
    data-autocomplete-items-property="items"
    data-autocomplete-filter-param-name="filter">

    <!-- You can define selected option(s) here  -->
    <option selected value="@SelectedAuthor.Id">@SelectedAuthor.Name</option>
</select>

The select must have the auto-complete-select class and the following attributes:

• data-autocomplete-api-url: * API Endpoint url to get select items. GET request will be sent to this url.
• data-autocomplete-display-property: * Property name to display. (For example: name or title. Property name of entity/dto.).
• data-autocomplete-value-property: * Identifier property name. (For example: id).
• data-autocomplete-items-property: * Property name of collection in response object. (For example: items)
• data-autocomplete-filter-param-name: * Filter text property name. (For example: filter).
• data-autocomplete-selected-item-name: Text to display as selected item.
• data-autocomplete-parent-selector: jQuery selector expression for parent DOM. (If it's in a modal, it's suggested to send the modal selector as this parameter).

Also, selected value(s) should be defined with the <option> tags inside select, since pagination is applied and the selected options might haven't loaded yet.

Multiple Choices

AutoComplete Select supports multiple choices. If the select tag has a multiple attribute, it'll allow to choose multiple options.

<select asp-for="Book.TagIds" 
    class="auto-complete-select"
    multiple="multiple"
    data-autocomplete-api-url="/api/app/tags"
    data-autocomplete-display-property="name"
    data-autocomplete-value-property="id"
    data-autocomplete-items-property="items"
    data-autocomplete-filter-param-name="filter">
    @foreach(var tag in SelectedTags)
    {
        <option selected value="@tag.Id">@tag.Name</option>
    }
</select>

It'll be automatically bound to a collection of defined value type.

    public List<Guid> TagIds { get; set; }

Notices

If the authenticated user doesn't have permission on the given URL, the user will get an authorization error. Be careful while designing this kind of UIs. You can create a specific, unauthorized endpoint/method to get the list of items, so the page can retrieve lookup data of dependent entity without giving the entire read permission to users.