Binding to BindingList<T> - choose what to bind?

Question

Say I have an business object called Sample and I have BindingList of Samples. A sample has 4 properties.

Can I select which properties are bound to DataGrid or there no option to customize such a thing?

NOTE: I am using Compact Framework, where is NO DataGridView, as well as Autogenerate property and DataMember property.

Please keep this in mind while replying.

Answer 1

I'm assuming you mean DataGrid in WinForms, but the same is applicable to most bindable controls.

Yes you can do this. The way to do this is a 2 step process

• Set the DataSource member to be the instance of the BindingList<T>.
• Set the DataMember property to be the string name of the property you want bound.

Answer 2

BindingList<Sample> samples = new BindingList<Sample>();
DataGridView dgv = new DataGridView();
dgv.DataSource = samples;

This should display each public property as a column on the DataGridView. If you want to change which properties are displayed, you need to do the following as well:

dgv.AutoGenerateColumns = false;

and go into the properties of the datagridview, add the columns manually and set the DataPropertyName to the property name.

If you created the datagridview in code, the following will create and add a column to the dgv.

DataGridViewColumn dgvc = new DataGridViewColumn();
dgvc.Name = "PropertyA";
dgvc.HeaderText = "Property A";
dgvc.DataPropertyName = "PropertyA";
dgv.Columns.Add(dgvc);

---

EDIT

This SHOULD give you something closer to what you were wanting. However, because it uses an anonymous class, you can't use BindingList (that I know of). Alternativly, you can create a SampleBinding class that just has the properties you want to be displayed and generate those from the list of normal samples.

public class Sample
{
    public int PropertyA {get;set;}
    public bool PropertyB {get;set;}
    public string PropertyC {get;set;}
    public double PropertyD {get;set;}
}

List<Sample> samples = new List<Samples>(GetSamples());
var sampleBinding = from sample in samples
                    select new
                    {
                        PropertyA = sample.PropertyA,
                        PropertyC = sample.PropertyC
                    };

BindingList bl = new BindingList();
bl.DataSource = sampleBinding;
dgv.DataSource = bl;

---

EDIT 2

public class Sample
{
    [Browsable(false)]
    public int PropertyA {get;set;}
    public bool PropertyB {get;set;}
    public string PropertyC {get;set;}
    [Browsable(false)]
    public double PropertyD {get;set;}
}

Answer 3

I have handled this a few different ways, hopefully this is helpful.

The first option, as Justin mentioned, is to set AutoGennerateColumns = false, and do it manually from there. If you bind it, the runtime will create columns for all of the public properties of Sample. If you want to remove them, you can do that with

DataGridView.Columns["SomePropertyOfSample"].Remove();

This solution is a bit problematic, as you need to keep it updated, and explicitly remove items.

Justin's Edit 2 option of setting the Browsable attribute to false on the property is interesting, I have not tried that before.

The solution that I have ended up using, and that I think works pretty well revolves around an interface.

I had two different DataGridViews that needed to show the same data, but showing and hiding different colums each time. In this case you would do:

public interface ISimpleSample
{
  string Name {get;}
  int ID {get;}
}

public interface IAdvancedSample
{
  string Name {get; set;}
  int ID {get; set;}
  string Make {get; set;}
  string Model {get; set;}
}

public class Sample : ISimpleSample, IAdvancedSample
{
  //Implementation skipped
}

You then create your Sample collection using

BindingList<ISimpleSample> = new BindingList<ISimpleSample>();

and bind to that.

If you want to add columns later, you just add them to the appropriate interface.

This worked well for my project, let me know what you think.