How to load large amounts of data in a ListBox? ASP.NET MVC application

ajax, asp.net-mvc, jquery, listbox

Solution

This sounds like a bad idea - 30,000 entries? How would you feel if you had to select from a list this size?

It is better to use autocomplete for this type of use case.

Problem

I am working with an ASP.NET MVC application. There is a requirement that a user be able to select an item from a ListBox that could contain over 30,000 entries. Is there a dynamic way to populate the contents of this ListBox using an Ajax call - that would perform well? Would I be better off just populating the ListBox control on the server and then having the user wait while the page renders with the 30,000 entries? Would performance be better if I adopted some sort of jQuery solution? Any suggestions on how to most efficiently deal with this scenario (without having the client change the requirement :-))?

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