Question

I am populating a SelectList w/ data that comes back from an AJAX call. However, the data is showing up as one item w/ a really long name instead of several dozen items w/ short names. I’m getting “ABC DEF GHI JKL MNO” instead of “ABC”, “DEF”, “GHI”, etc. So, my SelectList just gets one item attached w/ a long name.

If I view my returned data in a debugger, I can see the short values appearing on separate lines as desired.

I’ve tried using “html” instead of “json” for the return-type, but that had no effect.

Here is my server-side code:

private void GetItems(HttpContext context, int myID) 
{
    DataTable datatable = GetMyItems(myID);

    foreach (DataRow myRow in datatable.Rows)
    {
        Response.Write(myRow["ColumnName"].ToString() + Environment.NewLine);
    }
    Response.End();
}

And javascript…

$.ajax({
    url: "../myAjaxPage.aspx?myID=" + myID,
    type: 'POST',
    datatype: 'json',

    success: function (data) {
        $("<option>").attr("value", data).text(data).appendTo("#<%= mySelectList.ClientID %>");
    }
});

Answer 1

You aren’t returning JSON, you are just returning a string. But, that’s fine. Just split the string and iterate the resulting Array.

success: function (data) {
    $.each (data.split("\n"), function () {
        $("<option>").attr("value", this).text(this).appendTo("#<%= mySelectList.ClientID %>");
    });
});