Question

I have a wpf datagrid that has it’s columns generated dynamically in code and I need to insert small buttons in each column’s header to the right of the text to implement custom (complex) filtering in a popup dialog.

I’m having trouble figuring out how to insert a button into a datagrid column header using only code behind.

This is the route I started going down (commented out bit) but it doesn’t work:

private static DataGridTextColumn GetTextColumn(string ColumnName, string FormatString, bool AlignRight)
       {
           DataGridTextColumn c = new DataGridTextColumn();
           c.Header = Test.Common.UIBizObjectCache.LocalizedText.GetLocalizedText(ColumnName);
           c.Binding = new System.Windows.Data.Binding(ColumnName);
           if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(FormatString))
               c.Binding.StringFormat = FormatString;
           if (AlignRight)
           {
               Style cellRightAlignedStyle = new Style(typeof(DataGridCell));
               cellRightAlignedStyle.Setters.Add(new Setter(DataGridCell.HorizontalAlignmentProperty, HorizontalAlignment.Right));
               c.CellStyle = cellRightAlignedStyle;
           }

           //var buttonTemplate = new FrameworkElementFactory(typeof(Button));
           //buttonTemplate.Text = "X";
           //buttonTemplate.AddHandler(
           //                   Button.ClickEvent,
           //                   new RoutedEventHandler((o, e) => HandleColumnHeaderButtonClick(o, e))
           //               );
           //c.HeaderTemplate=new DataTemplate(){VisualTree = buttonTemplate};

           return c;
       }

I get an invalidoperationexception “‘ContentPresenter’ type must implement IAddChild to be used in FrameworkElementFactory AppendChild.”

Clearly I’m doing it wrong. 🙂 Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Do you need to use a template? If not use the normal Header property:

string colProperty = "Name";

DataGridTextColumn col = new DataGridTextColumn();
col.Binding = new Binding(colProperty);
var spHeader = new StackPanel() { Orientation = Orientation.Horizontal };
spHeader.Children.Add(new TextBlock(new Run(colProperty)));
var button = new Button();
button.Click += Button_Filter_Click;
button.Content = "Filter";
spHeader.Children.Add(button);
col.Header = spHeader;

dataGrid.Columns.Add(col);