Question

I wish to create custom control with Items property.

Is it safe to return class ItemColection that implements IList<Item>, because i didn’t saw this in any prebuilt controls?

What’s the best way to implement this?

Answer 1

There is no problem to create a property of type inherited from ILIst for a control. But if you are building a control it’s better to make your property editable with PropertyGrid in design time. To make it editable you should create your own collection of items inherited from CollectionBase and create a property of that type.

Check out this article: Creating a Custom Collection for Use in a PropertyGrid

And after that don’t forget to make your Items property editable in design time by setting appropriate attributes:

[Browsable(true), DesignerSerializationVisibility(DesignerSerializationVisibility.Content)]
public YourItemsCollection Items
{
    get { ... }
    set { ... }
}