Posted by gabriel, Wed Apr 02 12:39:00 UTC 2008

When using Ajax ControlTookit Autocomplete Extender I noticed that when the value I wanted to dislplay was a number starting with 0 (zero), like 0012, this initiating zero is removed and the result would show as 12. I didn’t want this beahavior so after googling for a few minutes I found a post that had a solution.

The each string of the list that is returned to the page should have escaped double quotes before and after the string. In the following example I take a DataTable and loop through it, creating a new List in which I add the element 0 (zero) of each row sorrounding it with the escaped double quotes.

 List<string> list = new List<string>(10); 

 for (int i = 0; i < dt.Rows.Count; i++)
 {
     list.Add("\""+ dt.Rows[i][0].ToString() + "\"");
 }

 string[] arrayString = list.ToArray();

I can only assume that when the result is rendered on the page ajax library try to convert the results to numbers. Surrounding each number with escaped double quotes forces them to be treated as strings.

Thanks to my friend Allison Bertoloto who brought this problem to my attention.

Filed Under: Tips and Tutorials | Tags: .net ajax asp.net controltoolkit