Question

I want to display and edit some objects in a WPF data grid and I’m looking for a good way to do so. All objects I want to display have the same fields, but every execution the fields of my objects can differ. Here is a piece of the interface to illustrate what I mean:

public interface IMyObject
{
    IEnumerable<string> GetFieldNames();
    IEnumerable<Type> GetFieldTypes();

    object GetField(string name);
    void SetField(string name, object value);
}

How can I generate a data grid which displays this kind of objects? I thought of XAML generation to define the columns, but I’m still facing the problem of accessing the fields. I think I could realize this with value converters, another option would be to dynamically create a type which exposes the dynamic fields with properties.

Are there any other ways and which should I favor? I’m keen on hearing your opinions.

Best Regards,
Oliver Hanappi

Answer 1

I would do this to my interface

public interface IMyObject
{
    IEnumerable<string> GetFieldNames();
    IEnumerable<Type> GetFieldTypes();

    //i would add this property, then you can bind directly to it.
    //basically it is a collection indexer, indexed by string
    object this[String name] { get; set; }

    object GetField(string name);
    void SetField(string name, object value);
}

I would build the columns in code like so, (where stringKeyCollection is a collection of strings returned from GetFieldNames() – although personally i would keep this information separate from my object – like a master definition)

foreach(String item in stringKeyCollection){
   //create the base column (use whatever column type you want
   DataGridBoundColumn column = new DataGridBoundColumn();
   //create the binding for the column
   column.Binding = new Binding("[" + item + "]");
   //set the header
   column.Header = item;
}

then you have objects in each cell of the grid and you can define templates however you wish.