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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-12T02:32:15+00:00

I am building a web app that will use an auto-complete/suggestions for the end

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I am building a web app that will use an auto-complete/suggestions for the end user as they type their information in. This will be specifically for entering Country, Province, City information.

Do a wild card search on the database on each keystroke:

SELECT CityName 
FROM City
WHERE CityName LIKE '%@CityName%'

Return a list of all Cities to a given Province to the client and have the client do the matching:

SELECT CityName 
FROM City
WHERE ProvinceID = @ProvinceID

These would be returned to the client as a JSON string via an ajax call to a web service. My thoughts are that javascript would be able to handle the list of 100+ entries via JSON faster than the database would be able to do a wildcard search, but I’d like the communities input.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    In the past, I have used both techniques. If you are talking about 100 or so entries, and assuming each entry is very small, it will likely be faster to do the autocomplete filter on the client side. That will provide you with better response time (although probably negligible) and will reduce the load on your server.

    Google actually does a live search while the user is typing, and it seems to be pretty responsive from the user’s point of view. This is an example where the query must be executed server-side because the dataset is far too large to transfer to the client.

    One thing you might do is wait until the user types two keystrokes before fetching the list from the server, thus narrowing down the results initially. Of course, that adds complexity – you would then need to refresh the list if the user changes either of the first two keystrokes.

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