Nowadays there are plenty of services available on the internet, e.g. for searching street names. This tutorial shows us how to implement a searchhelp for street names that doesn't require an active internet connection.

Starting point is a list with all streets in Germany: strassen_osm.txt:
The file size is about 1.50 MB and contains around 96000 entries.

The GuiXT script for entering the name of the street (first letters are sufficient), result table etc. looks like this:

GuiXT 

pushbutton (2,110) "search" process="search_street_va03.txt"
pushbutton (2,115) "choose" process="use_street_va03.txt"
inputfield (2,84) "Search for street" (3,100) size="25" name="searchstreet"
inputfield (3,84) "Results:" (3,100) size="25" name="chosenstreet"
Table (4,84) (17,140) name="streettab" title="Streets rows=10 -singlerowselection
Column "Street name" size=40 name="streets"

In the InputScript "search_street_va03.txt" we call a VB.NET function and then fill the table on the SAP screen with the data that we recieve from the function. (We restrict the results to a maximum of 10 rows.)

GuiXT 
// Clear table
Set "V[streettab.*]"  ""
callvb result = tutorials.utilities.find_streets "&V[searchstreet]"
if not V[result=0]
  message "&V[result]"
endif

copytext fromText="streets_results1" toString="streetTemp"
Set "V[streettab.cell.streets.1]" "&V[streetTemp]" 

copytext fromText="streets_results2" toString="streetTemp"
Set "V[streettab.cell.streets.2]" "&V[streetTemp]"

//etc.

In the function "find_streets" of class "utilities" of our class library "tutorials.dll" we search the textfile for any matching entry. A match means that the street name starts with the letters that the user has given. Then we put those results into a GuiXT textvariable for the previous InputSript:
VB.NET 
Public Function find_streets(ByVal search As String) As String

        Try
            If Not streets_read Then
                streets = File.ReadAllLines("c:\temp\strassen_osm.txt")
                streets_read = True
            End If

            Dim index = Array.BinarySearch(streets, search, New MyStringComparer())

            'Default: Emtpy cell
            For c As Integer = 1 To 10
                g.SetText("streets_results" + c.ToString, "")
            Next

            If index < 0 Then
                Return "Kein Eintrag gefunden"
            End If

            Dim mycomp As New MyStringComparer
            Dim myIndex As Integer = index

            While myIndex - 1 > 0 And mycomp.Compare(
                streets.ElementAtOrDefault(myIndex - 1), search) = 0

                myIndex -= 1

            End While

            For c As Integer = 0 To 9

                If mycomp.Compare(streets.ElementAtOrDefault(myIndex + c), 
                    search) = 0 Then
                    g.SetText("streets_results" + (c + 1).ToString, 
                    streets.ElementAtOrDefault(myIndex + c))
                End If
            Next


        Catch ex As Exception

            Return ex.Message

        End Try

        Return "0"

    End Function

Notes:
 
  - On using sorted lists we recommend you use a binary search (instead of linear search) to significantly reduce the search time.
  - The textfile containing the street names needs to be read only once from the hard disk and is then available in memory for future requests.

The user can  then mark any row of the result table and on clicking "choose" the name of the chosen street is put into an InputField:

GuiXT 

Set V[i] "1"
label selection
if  V[streettab.stat.rowselection.&V[i]=X] 
  set V[chosenstreet] "&V[streettab.cell.streets.&V[i]]"
endif
Set V[i] "&V[i]" + 1
if not V[i=11]
  goto selection
endif

return


Result: