Question

I have an array, arrStudents, that contains my students’ age, GPA, and name like so:

arrStudents[0].Age = "8"
arrStudents[0].GPA = "3.5"
arrStudents[0].Name = "Bob"

I tried to bind arrStudents to a DataGridView like so:

dataGridView1.DataSource = arrStudents;

But the contents of the array do NOT show up in the control. Am I missing something?

Answer 1

As with Adolfo, I’ve verified that this works. There is nothing wrong in the code shown, so the problem must be in the code you aren’t showing.

My guess: Age etc are not public properties; either they are internal or they are fields, i.e. public int Age; instead of public int Age {get;set;}.

Here’s your code working for both a well-typed array and an array of anonymous types:

using System;
using System.Linq;
using System.Windows.Forms;
public class Student
{
    public int Age { get; set; }
    public double GPA { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
}

internal class Program
{
    [STAThread]
    public static void Main() {
        Application.EnableVisualStyles();
        using(var grid = new DataGridView { Dock = DockStyle.Fill})
        using(var form = new Form { Controls = {grid}}) {
            // typed
            var arrStudents = new[] {
                new Student{ Age = 1, GPA = 2, Name = "abc"},
                new Student{ Age = 3, GPA = 4, Name = "def"},
                new Student{ Age = 5, GPA = 6, Name = "ghi"},
            };
            form.Text = "Typed Array";
            grid.DataSource = arrStudents;
            form.ShowDialog();

            // anon-type
            var anonTypeArr = arrStudents.Select(
                x => new {x.Age, x.GPA, x.Name}).ToArray();
            grid.DataSource = anonTypeArr;
            form.Text = "Anonymous Type Array";
            form.ShowDialog();
        }
    }
}