Proud Programmers Blog :: Need a high-capacity field-type with type-ahead and automcomplete for use in the Notes client. Any ideas on how to create this?

Tags: Lotus Notes Question

In our Notes client homepage, I would like to have a search-field with some special features, such type-ahead and autocomplete. Think of the Recent Contacts dro- down for the mail SendTo field as shown below;
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If this functionality also could be available for other fields, and that I could stuff what I want into the lookup-data, I would have been saved

So far, I see these options;

Use a standard Dialog List field. This can be tweaked to look pretty (place the field within tables, turn of the field delimiters and turn off the field helper, look at Tim Tripcony's blog here). Below you see a test;

The pros for this solution is that it works everywhere and the dialog list contains a list of words which easily could be retrieved via @formulas. Once loaded, it is super fast. On the down side, the data cannot exceed 64 kB, and I don't see the drop down list as for the Recent Contacts type-ahead. I could of course click enter to bring up the dialog box with the list, but I feel this is more cumbersome compared to a real combobox-like field. The biggest issue is undoubtedly the 64 kB limit.

Write a XPages solution. XPages may run in the Notes client context, but requires the full Standard client. Click here to read more about the differences in clients, if you are interested. The pros with XPages is that you are then developing a solution in an über-focused technology Also, you could probably use cool UI frameworks such as Dojo, JQuery etc to aid the development. Solutions such as TagDragon from Ferdy Christant really gives you a glimpse of what you can do;

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Write an Eclipse plugin. I do not have experience with this kind of plugins, and do not know whether an Eclipse-plugin would be feasible or not. Perhaps someone like Mikkel Heisterberg know that?

I guess the pro-side here would be that we comply to the way we should extend Notes from now on? The downside is perhaps that such a solution would require the full Standard Client with Eclipse-support, and wouldn't run in the Basic client

Write an ActiveX component. Here I do have some experience, and one could create an ActiveX component with all the UI bells and whistles of such a field. The cons is of course that I limit the usage to Windows, and that I am perhaps extending Notes in "oh, so 80's"-way?

Use a Composite Application. Perhaps one part could be a HTML page utilizing solutions like TagDragon above? Not so much experience with Composite Applications, so I do not know how feasible this would be.

With Windows-hooks, subclass a field on the Notes-homepage, and surface your own window. Ok, this is perhaps way off - and even more "oh, so 80's"-solution. And it is Windows only - and super-difficult. Not good.
If anybody have some ideas or recommendations, please jump in!

Comments

1 - I'd do it in XPages. What you're after is well-documented, easily implemented, and very extensible.

It will run in a browser, which may not interest you now, but may later and will be easy to re-use in other apps for the client and/or browser.

Posted by Erik Brooks At 13:25:53 On 24.09.2010 | - Website - |

2 - Have done this in native notes (even with dialogboxes). Bit more effort than just to explain here. You might send an email if you still need a solution

Posted by Art Zoutendijk At 16:45:00 On 25.07.2011 | - Website - |