Binding a BindingList to a collection

Question

I have a library that returns a collection like this:

public IEnumerable Alerts { .. }

and I want to turn this collection into a BindingList for use in the GUI. What is the best way to keep a BindingList synchronised with an IEnumerable collection?

edit: For this problem, assume I have no control of the library and the actual implementation uses a List.
But I do not want to touch this code.

This library also has a nice interface with AddAlert, RemoveAlert etc. What is the best way to keep the GUI synchronised with all these changes?

Answer 1

Assuming the class you are wrapping exposes things like Insert, you should just be able to derive from BindingList<T>, overriding a few key methods - something like:

class MyList<T> : BindingList<T>
{
    private readonly Foo<T> wrapped;
    public MyList(Foo<T> wrapped)
        : base(new List<T>(wrapped.Items))
    {
        this.wrapped = wrapped;
    }
    protected override void InsertItem(int index, T item)
    {
        wrapped.Insert(index, item);
        base.InsertItem(index, item);            
    }
    protected override void RemoveItem(int index)
    {
        wrapped.Remove(this[index]);
        base.RemoveItem(index);
    }
    protected override void ClearItems()
    {
        wrapped.Clear();
        base.ClearItems();
    }
    // possibly also SetItem
}

This should result in the lists staying in sync as you manipulate them.