4 Replies Latest reply on Feb 13, 2008 8:41 AM by Steve Sommers

    CFSELECT with 1000 options?? Ajax??

    yoman
    yoman Feb 12, 2008 10:52 AM
      Can anyone tell me how to handle this situation? I want to include information about the bands in a music calendar w/o having to re-enter the band websites or descriptions for each entry. So the bands have their own table. The idea for data entry is to 1) select a location 2) list dates for a month 3) have a cfselect box with bandname associated with each date and 4) on submit loop through and insert into database.

      Unfortunately, there are like hundreds and hundreds of bands. So putting 30 cfselect tags with 1000 options each on a page seems ridiculous. I've thought of doing a lookup based on the band name instead of the ID. If the name was typed incorrectly, no data, but it would work most of the time.

      What about Ajax? I know zip about Ajax, but isn't that what is it for? Could it be done w/o spending six months learning Ajax?
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        • 1. Re: CFSELECT with 1000 options?? Ajax??
          Dan Bracuk Level 5
          Dan Bracuk Feb 12, 2008 12:16 PM (in response to yoman)
          use a series of checkboxes for the dates. that will get you started.
          • 2. Re: CFSELECT with 1000 options?? Ajax??
            yoman Level 1
            yoman Feb 12, 2008 12:30 PM (in response to Dan Bracuk)
            I probably didn't make myself clear. The problem isn't the date. The problem is that every date would include a cfselect box with 1000 options, one for each band. The code would look like below.



            • 3. Re: CFSELECT with 1000 options?? Ajax??
              Level 7
              Newsgroup_User Feb 12, 2008 1:09 PM (in response to Dan Bracuk)
              Have either an A-Z series of links (followed by fine-tuning from thee) or a
              search.

              I recommend you investigate how popular directories (eg: Yahoo!) do it, and
              emulate that sort of thing, unless you can come up with anything better.
              Hint: big companies spend big bucks on UI design, so they will probably do
              it better than the likes of you or I could come up with.

              One concept could be - as you touch on - emulating a combo box idea using
              an input, and some sort of multiple select / div sort of arrangement, and
              having an AJAX call back to populate the multi-select thing with
              appropriate filtered data as the user types. Google does it.

              There's quite possible already a CF-friendly solution out there (maybe even
              with CFFORM controls? Never use CFFORM meself).

              --
              Adam
              • 4. Re: CFSELECT with 1000 options?? Ajax??
                Steve Sommers Level 4
                Steve Sommers Feb 13, 2008 8:41 AM (in response to yoman)
                I would rethink how you're presenting the information to the user, much like what Adam said. Research similar sites. Having a select box, or multiple boxes with thousands of options each would be very cumbersome and virtually useless to the average web surfer.