Is there a way to get a "table like" appearance to my dropdown entries?

Question

Using a fixed-width font (e.g. Consolas, Courier, etc), I am trying to populate a dropdown menu (AjaxControlToolkit:DropDownList) that has 2 columns (in appearance). I have a product name and a category name (neither of which I know until runtime). The appearance I'm looking for is something like:

               Chevy Cruz     (gas)
               Prius          (hybrid)
               Tesla Model S  (electic)

My list can have over 300 entries and if I just append the category to the product name, the menu is harder to read.

I've tried using a character array and copying in the category name at the same index for each ListItem, but the spaces between disappear when the dropdown list is opened. I've looked at the ListItem(Paragraph) constuctor but it doesn't look to solve my problem to my understanding of it. I haven't looked at the Telerik controls I have available because it would mean a lot of coding changes.

I can't think of another AjaxControlToolkit control that might help.

Possible duplicate of [Select Multiple Html with columns - possible?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25213160/select-multiple-html-with-columns-possible) — Heretic Monkey, Jan 08 '19 at 02:21

Fedri Qrueger · Answer 1 · 2019-01-09T02:52:12.587

0

string padding might be works for you

var _maxLengthOfProductName = 20; //number of space you need
var _productName = "Product Name";
var _type = "(type)";
var _ProductNameWithType = _productName.PadRight(_maxLengthOfProductName, ' ') + _type; //assign this to the dropdown item
_ProductNameWithType = _ProductNameWithType.Replace(" ", "&nbsp;");

it will show

Product Name        (type)

edited Jan 09 '19 at 02:52

answered Jan 03 '19 at 02:02

Fedri Qrueger

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Thanks for suggesting, I tried this approach but once again, the padding disappears once added to the dropdown control. – J T-Rose Jan 07 '19 at 19:39
sorry I forgot, just edit my answer.. try ' ' or ' ' – Fedri Qrueger Jan 08 '19 at 02:15
' ' is not a character literal. – J T-Rose Jan 08 '19 at 15:44
sorry, just edit to use char and replace it with nbsp; – Fedri Qrueger Jan 09 '19 at 02:52
The spacing still disappears once added to the dropdown. – J T-Rose Jan 11 '19 at 18:15

Is there a way to get a "table like" appearance to my dropdown entries?

1 Answers1