Question

I have a PropertyGrid on my form. My boss thinks it’s ugly. Uncouth. Unsophisticated.

He wants a nice, neat, clean form. Here’s the catch: One of the properties is a collection of our home-grown objects. He likes the collection editor for this collection.

I know I can build my own collection editor. But is there a clean, simple solution to save me a few hours of coding, such that I can create and use a Collection editor directly without using the property grid?

Answer 1

You can get this functionality from the UITypeEditor (via TypeDescriptor), but it isn’t trivial – you need to set up an IServiceProvider, an IWindowsFormsEditorService, and ideally an ITypeDescriptorContext – quite a bit of faff. It might be simpler to do it by hand if you aren’t familiar with those tools.

Alternatively – take a look at SmartPropertyGrid.NET, an alternative to PropertyGrid.

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Update: here’s a working example… definitely non-trivial, but feel free to steal the code. It only works for modal editors, not drop-down. It also isn’t a great example of ‘separation of concerns’. The MyHelper class is the interesting one.

using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Drawing.Design; using System.Windows.Forms; using System.Windows.Forms.Design; class Foo {     public Foo() { Bars = new List<Bar>(); }     public List<Bar> Bars { get; private set; } } class Bar {     public string Name { get; set; }     public DateTime DateOfBirth { get; set; } } static class Program {     [STAThread]     static void Main()     {         Foo foo = new Foo();         Bar bar = new Bar();         bar.Name = 'Fred';         bar.DateOfBirth = DateTime.Today;         foo.Bars.Add(bar);         Application.EnableVisualStyles();         using(Form form = new Form())         using (Button btn = new Button())         {             form.Controls.Add(btn);             btn.Text = 'Edit';             btn.Click += delegate             {                 MyHelper.EditValue(form, foo, 'Bars');             };             Application.Run(form);         }     } }  class MyHelper : IWindowsFormsEditorService, IServiceProvider, ITypeDescriptorContext {     public static void EditValue(IWin32Window owner, object component, string propertyName) {         PropertyDescriptor prop = TypeDescriptor.GetProperties(component)[propertyName];         if(prop == null) throw new ArgumentException('propertyName');         UITypeEditor editor = (UITypeEditor) prop.GetEditor(typeof(UITypeEditor));         MyHelper ctx = new MyHelper(owner, component, prop);         if(editor != null && editor.GetEditStyle(ctx) == UITypeEditorEditStyle.Modal)         {             object value = prop.GetValue(component);             value = editor.EditValue(ctx, ctx, value);             if (!prop.IsReadOnly)             {                 prop.SetValue(component, value);             }         }     }     private readonly IWin32Window owner;     private readonly object component;     private readonly PropertyDescriptor property;     private MyHelper(IWin32Window owner, object component, PropertyDescriptor property)     {         this.owner = owner;         this.component = component;         this.property = property;     }     #region IWindowsFormsEditorService Members      public void CloseDropDown()     {         throw new NotImplementedException();     }      public void DropDownControl(System.Windows.Forms.Control control)     {         throw new NotImplementedException();     }      public System.Windows.Forms.DialogResult ShowDialog(System.Windows.Forms.Form dialog)     {         return dialog.ShowDialog(owner);     }      #endregion      #region IServiceProvider Members      public object GetService(Type serviceType)     {         return serviceType == typeof(IWindowsFormsEditorService) ? this : null;     }      #endregion      #region ITypeDescriptorContext Members      IContainer ITypeDescriptorContext.Container     {         get { return null; }     }      object ITypeDescriptorContext.Instance     {         get { return component; }     }      void ITypeDescriptorContext.OnComponentChanged()     {}      bool ITypeDescriptorContext.OnComponentChanging()     {         return true;     }      PropertyDescriptor ITypeDescriptorContext.PropertyDescriptor     {         get { return property; }     }      #endregion }