WPF ListView column auto sizing

Question

Let's say I have the following ListView:

<ListView ScrollViewer.VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Auto">
  <ListView.View>
    <GridView>
      <GridViewColumn Header="Something" 
                      DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding Path=ShortText}" />
      <GridViewColumn Header="Description"
                      DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding Path=VeryLongTextWithCRs}" />
      <GridViewColumn Header="Something Else" 
                      DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding Path=AnotherShortText}" />
    </GridView>
  </ListView.View>
</ListView>

I'd like the short text columns to always fit in the screen, and the long text column to use the remaining space, word-wrapping if necessary.

Is that possible?

Answer 1

Set Width="Auto" on your GridViewColumns. However, due to virtualization you may encounter some problems with auto-sizing.

See this question.

So, long-story-short, if you want accurate auto-sizing of columns you'll need to recalculate your widths when the visible data changes, due to virtualization.

Answer 2

There is no easy way to do this with a GridListView since it doesn't support setting the width of a column to "*" (fill remaining space).

Here is a discussion of how you could fake it by using an IValueConverter to set the width of the column to TotalListWidth - SumOfColumnWidths

On the other hand, have you considered using a DataGrid instead? This will support the kind of layout you are looking for, though is a considerably heavier control. It is also only native in .NET 4 - though you can get an equivalent for 3.5 through the WPF Toolkit.