Autocomplete - How can I fire the server-side binding for the datasource after retyping the first few characters

Question

Im using Ajax binding on a Autocomplete widget. The binding works fine the first time (at the first load of data), but if I back up over the value, it wont go back to the server again (it won't refresh it's dataSource items). How can I get the dataSource to refresh if I type a new string?

@(Html.Kendo().AutoComplete()
    .Name("Orders")
    .HtmlAttributes(new { style = "background-color:lightyellow;width:300px;" })
    .Events(e =>
    {
        e.Select("selectOrder");
    })
    .Filter("startswith")
    .Placeholder("Select order or enter new one")
    .Filter("startswith")
    .MinLength(3)    
    .DataSource(dataSource => dataSource
    .Read(read => read.Action("CustomerOrders", "Processing")
    .Type(HttpVerbs.Post).Data("getInputs"))).DataTextField("HouseNo")) 

Answer 1

I think you want to set the ServerOperation on the Datasource to true, like this:

.DataSource(dataSource => dataSource
.Read(read => read.Action("CustomerOrders", "Processing"))
.ServerOperation(true)

Answer 2

Since you provide your input text for the read then you have to set the ServerFiltering ( documentation ) for your datasource to true in order to always filter from the server. I'm guessing that is the way that you want to handle it right? This will always trigger a server filtering though so if you have a lot of data it might be a good idea to set a MinLength for your requests for example 3-4 like this

.MinLength(4)

This way your datasource will read after the first 4 characters are typed and when you delete a character a dataSource.Read will be triggered too.