MVC autocomplete not working - asp.net-mvc

Question

I know there are lot of posts out there but simply I can not figure out what I am doing wrong in autocomplete.
I have a ProductController like
public JsonResult AutocompleteMethod(string searchstring) //searchString null here
{
Product ob=new Product();
List<Product> newLst = ob.GetProducts();
var suggestions = from s in newLst select s.productName ;
var namelist = suggestions.Where(n=>n.StartsWith(searchstring));
return Json(namelist, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
}
In view I have:
<p>
Find by name:<%: Html.TextBox("Txt") %>
</p>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://code.jquery.com/ui/1.10.0/themes/base/jquery-ui.css" />
<script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.8.3.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="http://code.jquery.com/ui/1.10.0/jquery-ui.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/jscript">
$(function () {
debugger;
$('#Txt').autocomplete({ source: '/Product/AutocompleteMethod' });
});
</script>
But always SearchString is NULL in controller function.
Can you figure out what is the mistake?

Answer 1

AFAIK the parameter is called term, not searchstring, so:
public ActionResult AutocompleteMethod(string term)
{
List<Product> newLst = new Product().GetProducts();
var namelist =
from p in newLst
where p.StartsWith(term)
select new
{
value = p.Id, // you might need to adjust the Id property name here to match your model
label = p.productName
};
return Json(namelist, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
}
Also I very much doubt that productName is a property that the autocomplete plugin will ever recognize. You could try using value and label as shown in the projection I performed in my example.