Multiple Dropdown Issue

[CJ]

What I have is a form that has a dropdown with a list of letters, the alphabet, and what I want to do is when the user selects a letter, I want the a query to be run to populate the second dropdown with the list of everyone last name that starts with the letter that the user just selected With Out re-loading the page or javascript. The name table has over 10,000 rows so you can see why I do not want them in the dropdown to start with and why a javascript array will not work for this aplication. Any Ideas?

[Newsgroup_User]

If your requirements do not allow you to load all the data on the first
request, then your choice is to do this in multiple steps with a new
request-response cycle after the user selects the letter.

If you want to make this nicer you can hide that request-response behind
the scenes by using AJAX techniques.

This type of task is very common and well discussed with many examples
readily available through a bit of searching.

[CJ]

Well, I have done quite abit of searching and have not found anything useful. Do you have any links you could share?

[Newsgroup_User]

You do not specify your system so I do not know what capabilities you
have available. Here is a link making use of CF8's built in AJAX
functionality. If you do not have 8, then you will have to look at some
other options. I found many other likely looking resources on the
Google results from a search for 'ajax related select'.

http://www.forta.com/blog/index.cfm/2007/5/31/ColdFusion-Ajax-Tutorial-2-Related-Selects

[Dan_Bracuk]

Even if you can get it to work, you are still going to have problems in that your user is presented with a drop down of several hundred choices once they choose a letter. You may want to consider another approach.

[CJ]

Good Point. I can not think of any other better way to really do it. Maybe I am having a brain fade today. Maybe if I have them type in the first 2 or 3 letters in a text field, then to do a search that way. Not sure.

[Newsgroup_User · Accepted solution]

autosuggest. cf8 has that functionality, too.
if you are not on cf8, look into using Rob Gonda's AjaxCFC.

Azadi Saryev
Sabai-dee.com
http://www.sabai-dee.com/

[CJ]

Thanks for the feedback, from both of you. I will check into this

[CJ]

Will be using CF8 for this project

[CJ]

Thanks for the Autosuggest Idea. It works great for what I want to do. Thanks again. I also got the update from one dropdown to another working as well, but I like the autosuggest better.