C#: How to add images in listview?

Question

Such a decent question,how do I add images(I googled,but they say I have to add approximately 50 lines of code to do that,why?)?

Answer 1

It depends where on the item you want the image to appear.

• To set an icon to the left of each item, first set the control's LargeImageList and/or SmallImageList properties, then set the item's ImageIndex property.
• To display an image anywhere else on an item, you'll need to use the list view control's owner drawing functionality. There's an example in MSDN, although this may be the same 50 lines of code you've already found.

Answer 2

A big problem with WinForms is that it is just a small abstraction over the native windows UI controls. As long as WinForms supports the required functionality, such as the icons on ListView as Tim mentioned, it is relatively easy to accomplish the task but as soon as WinForms does not support the functionality you want, you need to implement it almost from scratch. Luckily List controls in WinForms provide a relatively easy way to draw your own content using the owner drawing functionality.

Easier way is to have a look at WPF which is much more versatile framework when it comes to requiring more specialized functionality. Though this requires .Net framework 3.0 or greater and has a bit steeper learning curve.