Hi nicko ,
Thank you for reaching out to us. Upon reviewing your configuration, we noticed that the following line in your Program.cs file is causing the issue:
builder.Services.AddControllersWithViews()
.AddJsonOptions(options => options.JsonSerializerOptions.ReferenceHandler = ReferenceHandler.Preserve);
This particular setting, ReferenceHandler.Preserve, adds additional metadata to the serialized JSON, which is intended to handle complex object graphs with circular references. However, for simpler data structures such as List<string>, this added metadata can interfere with the expected output, leading to issues with the list not being returned or bound correctly.
To resolve this issue, we recommend commenting out or removing this line from your Program.cs file if handling circular references is not required for your project. This will ensure that the list is serialized and returned properly without the extra metadata.

Please feel free to reach out if you have any further questions or need additional assistance.
Regards,
Priyanka K
Attachment:
Syncfusion.AutocompleteProblems_43bed85.zip