Managing a list of 22,000 items...

Hi,

I'm trying to design a web page that allows users to select one or more items from a list (amongst other things). The problem is that the list can be from a database of over twenty thousand items. So I'm trying to work out the best way to manage the selection of items from this list prior to submitting the form. I'm happy to code the result in DHTML, I'm competent with SQL Javascript and HTML, it's more a cleaver idea for the management of the selection process that I'm interested in. As far as I see it the options are theses...

1) Read all items to a <select> list. (With 20,000 items, that doesn't sound good fun.)

2) Provide an <input> text box, a <button> and two <select>. Enter wildcard text in the <input>, click the <button> to return a matching list in the first <select>. Clicking items in the first <select> to move them to the second select, so that a new search can be made via the <input>. Items can be clicked in the second <select> to remove them from the list.

3) Any bright ideas from you guys.

Either a description of a better method or a pointer to a page that demonstrates a better idea would be wonderful.

Many thanks,


Martin

Use should use a pagination function to split the list over muliple pages.

I would recommend using checkboxes.

Thanks for the comment. As for pagnating the list, I really don't see that anyone would want to be faced with a list of 22,000 items in any format, with or without pagnation. The way to make this list useable, as I see it, is to find a way to allow the user to make a few simple selections which then quickly provide them with a much shorter, more managable list. Another idea I just had is to provide a <select> with the letters of the alphabet, a selection of one will then populate a second select with the (on avarage) 1000 items beginning with that letter. A thousand still seems too many though. :-( I think that I'll just have to make a prototype of each plausable idea.

As for the check boxes, do you mean to place a check box next to each item for slection purposes?

Thanks again, all comments much appriciated.

Martin

Correct