Value list performance when single field

[sal88]

Hi all

I've created a value list that serves as an email autocomplete drop down (like the sort in an email client). This VL looks to a single text field in a single record table which currently has 3000 lines. The field is updated every 15 minutes by a scheduled server script.

The 'auto complete using value list' option is applied on the field that refers to this VL.

The old method was to not have a VL but to just tick the 'auto complete using existing values' option on the field. This was not ideal because existing values might be incorrectly spelled email addresses (and the user would not be able to remove them).

Since switching to the new method it is slower to retrieve the values from the VL. It is not the type of slowness that locks up filemake; rather it just means the user has to wait 1-4 seconds for values to pop up when letters are typed - before this is was instant in the way it is instant in normal email clients.

Does anyone have any ideas as to how to speed it up? Or whether this is expected from a single field VL?

 

Thanks

Edited July 27, 2017 by sal88

[Steve Martino]

I would think a picker window/popover with type ahead would be much better.  In the case of 3000+ records you could start with 0, suppress the type ahead for at least the first 2 or 3 characters.

[sal88]

Thanks Steve

I've implemented something like that: a popover window with a portal and dynamic filter like this one http://www.soliantconsulting.com/blog/2013/03/dynamically-filtering-filtered-portals

However I'm unsure how to get it to work as seamlessly as a drop down list - i.e. so the user doesn't have to move the mouse to the filter field.

Do you have any example files for this approach?

Thanks

UPDATE: I've resolved it by changing from the single field to a new table that contains those lines as records. It is very very fast now.

Edited July 28, 2017 by sal88