DataGridView - setting object's displayed value in a column

Question

I bind some collection to a DataGridView. Collection contains KeyValuePair objects where key is a string and value is an object of my class Field. DataGridView displays two columns - one containing the key and the other one containing the value. The value (Field object) is displayed with its ToString() method. But I would like it to be displayed using its Name property. The problem is the column contains no DisplayMember property.
How can i do it?

Edit: I know I could override ToString() to return the name of the object but I don't want to do that.

Answer 1

DataGridView (in common with most direct list-based bindings) can only bind to immediate properties of the row item. You could perhaps create a facade object for this? i.e. a class that accepts the instance and returns the name as a direct property:

public string Name {
    get {return innerObject.Name;}
    set {innerObject.Name = value;}
}
// snipped: other properties - Key etc

Alternatively, you could project into a new object? For example, data-bindings work (read-only, at least) with anonymous types pretty well:

grid.DataSource = originalData.Select(x=>
    new {x.Key, Name = x.Field.Name}).ToList();

Finally, you can hack around in ComponentModel to flatten the model at runtime, but it really isn't worth it just for this.

Answer 2

See also this question

Answer 3

You could put the DataGridView into virtual mode (view.VirtualMode = true), and handle the CellValueNeeded (and possibly the CellValuePushed) events to access the "Name" property. This would avoid creating lots of wrapper objects, but does make the code somewhat less elegant.