Question

I am using a WebApi controller to return an IDictionary to jQuery autocomplete like so:

public IDictionary<int, string> GetClientAuto(string term)
    {
        var clients = db.Clients.Where(n => n.Name.Contains(term)).OrderBy(n => n.Name);
        return clients.ToDictionary(n => n.ClientID, n => n.Name);
    }

The issue is although I add a breakpoint and check the variable clients is sorting by Name turns to to be true, the order shown in the autocomplete box is different, possibly I expect by the ID. I tried adding this to the autocomplete: sortResults:false, but with no effect.

I have this in my succes function, is there something here maybe I need to change for the order to work on the label i.e. Name:

success: function (json) {
                        // call autocomplete callback method with results
                        response($.map(json, function (name, val) {
                            return {
                                label: name,
                                value: val
                            }
                        }));
                    },

Answer 1

Its being sorted by the ToDictionary call, the order of dictionaries isn’t actually defined (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/yt2fy5zk.aspx) as it shouldn’t matter, however i believe it is typically the value of the key, not the value.

You could resort it in javascript to be by name, or you could return something other than a dictionary from your api. Either a IEnumerable> or IEnumerable would do the trick.

Alterntively look into the OrderBy methods on the dictionary, however they all appear to return a list of KeyValuePairs.

End result should look something like

public IEnumerable<KeyValuePair<int, string>> GetClientAuto(string term)
{
  return db.Clients.Where(n => n.Name.Contains(term)).OrderBy(n => n.Name).Select(n => new KeyValuePair<int, string>(n.ClientID, n.Name ));
}

success: function (json) 
{
   response($.map(json, function (item) {
      return {
        label: item.Value,
        value: item.Key
      }
   }));
},