I can't seem to find the answer to this anywhere. What default editors/converters are building into 3.5 Framework PropertyGrid control. Otherwise what object types can I throw at it and it be able to reliably show and edit? I've found a lot of tutorials on using custom editors (which I may do at some point). But right now in my program I'm allowing the user to create their own custom properties and I want to know what object types I should allow assuming they will be editing them in a PropertyGrid.
+1
A:
You can actually throw any object at the PropertyGrid. It will do a lot of things automatically. You only need to create custom UI type editors if you want to have a special edit experience, which is not natively provided. And even in that case you do it per property and not for a whole object.
__grover
2009-04-09 19:40:50
But what are all the things it will do automaticly? Right now I don't want to deal with custom editors. I've tried various numbers, string, bool, and DateTime and they all either work or have built in editors. I was hoping there was a list somewhere of all the types that can be edited by default.
Eric Anastas
2009-04-09 19:45:22
You can look at the inheritance hierarchy of your property types if they have a UITypeEditor attached as an attribute or not. By default the property grid needs either an editor or a type converter to get to/from string.
__grover
2009-04-09 19:53:43
+2
A:
You might want to take a look at classes that derive from UITypeEditor (in the System.Drawing.Design namespace). These types will be passed as parameters to the Editor attribute (in the System.ComponentModel namespace).
You can also look at the metadata for the type to see where the Editor attribute is applied. However, DO NOT use Reflection here, as that is not what the PropertyGrid uses.
Rather use the TypeDescriptor class to get property descriptors for the properties on the type (call the static GetProperties method). Then, with the PropertyDescriptor instance, call the GetEditor class to get an instance of the editor for that property.
casperOne
2009-04-09 19:47:23
I see UITypeEditor but not UIEditor, are you sure that is the right name or did something change between framework versions?
Eric Anastas
2009-04-09 20:10:53
+1
A:
The PropertyGrid uses TypeConverters and there are TypeConverters for every primitive type (as well as collections of primitive types).
As long as you're using one of the primitive types or a collection of primitive types the property grid should be able to take care of providing an editing UI.
Arnshea
2009-04-09 19:55:18
+1
A:
Besides UITypeEditors, the PropertyGrid is able to display any object with a TypeConverter that returns true for CanConvertFrom(String). You can implement your own TypeConverters for specific object types in order to accomplish this.
Dave Foster
2009-09-14 15:33:38
+1
A:
Bear in mind that there some non-public classes.
System.Object
System.Drawing.Design.UITypeEditor
System.ComponentModel.Design.CollectionEditor
System.ComponentModel.Design.ArrayEditor
System.Web.UI.Design.CollectionEditorBase
System.Web.UI.Design.WebControls.WizardStepCollectionEditor
System.Web.UI.Design.WebControls.EmbeddedMailObjectCollectionEditor
System.Web.UI.Design.WebControls.HotSpotCollectionEditor
System.Web.UI.Design.WebControls.ListItemsCollectionEditor
System.Web.UI.Design.WebControls.MenuItemStyleCollectionEditor
System.Web.UI.Design.WebControls.RoleGroupCollectionEditor
System.Web.UI.Design.WebControls.StyleCollectionEditor
System.Web.UI.Design.WebControls.SubMenuStyleCollectionEditor
System.Web.UI.Design.WebControls.TableCellsCollectionEditor
System.Web.UI.Design.WebControls.TableRowsCollectionEditor
System.ComponentModel.Design.BinaryEditor
System.ComponentModel.Design.DateTimeEditor
System.ComponentModel.Design.MultilineStringEditor
System.ComponentModel.Design.ObjectSelectorEditor
System.Windows.Forms.Design.AnchorEditor
System.Windows.Forms.Design.BorderSidesEditor
System.Windows.Forms.Design.DockEditor
System.Windows.Forms.Design.FileNameEditor
System.Windows.Forms.Design.FolderNameEditor
System.Windows.Forms.Design.ShortcutKeysEditor
System.Web.UI.Design.ConnectionStringEditor
System.Web.UI.Design.DataBindingCollectionEditor
System.Web.UI.Design.ExpressionsCollectionEditor
System.Web.UI.Design.UrlEditor
System.Web.UI.Design.XmlFileEditor
System.Web.UI.Design.WebControls.DataGridColumnCollectionEditor
System.Web.UI.Design.WebControls.DataControlFieldTypeEditor
System.Web.UI.Design.WebControls.MenuBindingsEditor
System.Web.UI.Design.WebControls.MenuItemCollectionEditor
System.Web.UI.Design.WebControls.ParameterCollectionEditor
System.Web.UI.Design.WebControls.RegexTypeEditor
System.Web.UI.Design.WebControls.TreeNodeCollectionEditor
System.Web.UI.Design.WebControls.TreeViewBindingsEditor
System.Web.UI.Design.WebControls.DataPagerFieldTypeEditor
System.Messaging.Design.QueuePathEditor
System.Drawing.Design.ImageEditor
System.Drawing.Design.ColorEditor
System.Drawing.Design.ContentAlignmentEditor
System.Drawing.Design.CursorEditor
System.Drawing.Design.FontEditor
System.Drawing.Design.FontNameEditor
System.Drawing.Design.IconEditor
System.Workflow.ComponentModel.Design.TypeBrowserEditor
System.Workflow.ComponentModel.Design.BindUITypeEditor
alga
2010-02-23 12:25:06