Question

I am having a hard time binding a ListView with an ObservableCollection in another class.

My xaml:

<ListView Height="117" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="20,239,0,0" Name="lvResults" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="759" ItemsSource="{Binding RuleSearch.FileMatches}">
        <ListView.View>
            <GridView>
                <GridViewColumn Header="Name" Width="120" DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding FileName}"/>
                <GridViewColumn Header="Size" Width="120" DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding DirectoryName}"/>
                <GridViewColumn Header="Date" Width="120" DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding Size}"/>
                <GridViewColumn Header="Full Path" Width="120" />
                <GridViewColumn Header="Some Meaningless Data" Width="120" />
            </GridView>
        </ListView.View>
    </ListView>

The Xaml behind code:

private Search _ruleSearch = new Search();
public Search RuleSearch { get { return _ruleSearch; }}

In Search class:

public ObservableCollection<Result> FileMatches { get; private set; }

Note the changes are made on a new thread, if that makes a difference:

private void FindResultOnNewThreads()
  {
     FileMatches.Clear();

     Parallel.ForEach(_fileList, file =>
     {
        foreach (Regex search in SearchTermList.Where(search => search.IsMatch(file)))
        {
           lock (FileMatches)
           {
              FileInfo fileInfo = new FileInfo(file);
              FileMatches.Add(new Result
                                 {
                                    Attributes = fileInfo.Attributes,
                                    DirectoryName = fileInfo.DirectoryName,
                                    Extension = fileInfo.Extension,
                                    FileName = fileInfo.Name,
                                    FullNamePath = fileInfo.FullName,
                                    Size = fileInfo.Length
                                 });
           }
        }
     });
  }

Result class:

    public class Result
   {
      public string FileName { get; set; }
      public string DirectoryName { get; set; }
      public string FullNamePath { get; set; }
      public long Size { get; set; }
      public string Extension { get; set; }
      public FileAttributes Attributes { get; set; }

   }

Issue really is, I am learning wpf by myself and couldn’t really find a rule set for data binding in WPF. I know that it requires properties and public ones, other than that I am stuck.

Answer 1

Probably your listViews DataContext is not set to the UserControls or Windows or whatever, where you have your RuleSearch prop.

You can set it in the xaml.cs codebehind.

lvResult.DataContext = this;

or in xaml

<ListView Height="117" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="20,239,0,0" Name="lvResults" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="759" ItemsSource="{Binding Path=RuleSearch.FileMatches, RelativeSource={RelativeSource AncestorType={x:Type typeOfAncestor}}}">
    <ListView.View>
        <GridView>
            <GridViewColumn Header="Name" Width="120" DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding FileName}"/>
            <GridViewColumn Header="Size" Width="120" DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding DirectoryName}"/>
            <GridViewColumn Header="Date" Width="120" DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding Size}"/>
            <GridViewColumn Header="Full Path" Width="120" />
            <GridViewColumn Header="Some Meaningless Data" Width="120" />
        </GridView>
    </ListView.View>
</ListView>

where typeOfAncestor is the type of your usercontrol/window…