Question

How do you get the content of a single cell of a WPF toolkit DataGrid in C#?

By content I mean some plain text that could be in there.

Answer 1

Following what Phillip said – the DataGrid is usually data-bound. Below is an example where my WPF DataGrid is bound to an ObservableCollection<PersonName> where a PersonName is comprised of a FirstName and LastName (both strings).

The DataGrid supports automatic column creation so the example is quite simple. You’ll see that I can access rows by their index and get the value of a cell in that row by using the property name that corresponds to the column name.

namespace WpfApplication1
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Interaction logic for Window1.xaml
    /// </summary>
    public partial class Window1 : Window
    {
        public Window1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();

            // Create a new collection of 4 names.
            NameList n = new NameList();

            // Bind the grid to the list of names.
            dataGrid1.ItemsSource = n;

            // Get the first person by its row index.
            PersonName firstPerson = (PersonName) dataGrid1.Items.GetItemAt(0);

            // Access the columns using property names.
            Debug.WriteLine(firstPerson.FirstName);

        }
    }

    public class NameList : ObservableCollection<PersonName>
    {
        public NameList() : base()
        {
            Add(new PersonName("Willa", "Cather"));
            Add(new PersonName("Isak", "Dinesen"));
            Add(new PersonName("Victor", "Hugo"));
            Add(new PersonName("Jules", "Verne"));
        }
    }

    public class PersonName
    {
        private string firstName;
        private string lastName;

        public PersonName(string first, string last)
        {
            this.firstName = first;
            this.lastName = last;
        }

        public string FirstName
        {
            get { return firstName; }
            set { firstName = value; }
        }

        public string LastName
        {
            get { return lastName; }
            set { lastName = value; }
        }
    }
}