Question

I’m trying to do an “empty list to visibility converter” for WPF.
This is an IValueConverter that takes an object ( that should be a list ) and if the list is empty (or if the passed object is null ) it should return Visibility.Collapsed; if the list is not empty it should return Visibility.Visibile;

I plan to use this for a datagrid. The plan is to make the datagrid invisible (collapsed) whenever the list given to the ItemsSource is an empty list or a null.

<my:DataGrid 
                    Name="dataGridAuxiliaryTools"
                    Style="{StaticResource DataGridStyle}"
                    CellStyle="{StaticResource DataGridCellStyle}"
                    ColumnHeaderStyle="{StaticResource DataGridColumnHeaderStyle}"
                    ItemsSource="{Binding Path=Items}"
                    IsReadOnly="False"
                    Visibility="{Binding Path=Items, 
                    Converter={StaticResource emptyListToVisibilityConverter}}"
 </my:DataGrid>

I wrote the EmptyListToVisibilityConverter as follows:

public class EmptyListToVisibilityConverter : IValueConverter
    {
    public object Convert(object value, Type targetType, object parameter,
                          CultureInfo culture)
    {
        if (value == null)
        {
            return Visibility.Collapsed;
        }
        else if (value is IList<Object>)
        {
            if ((value as IList<Object>).Count == 0)
            {
                return Visibility.Collapsed;
            }
            else
            {
                return Visibility.Visible;
            }
        }
        else
        {
            return Visibility.Visible;
        }
    }

    public object ConvertBack(object value, Type targetType, object parameter,
                              CultureInfo culture)
    {
        throw new NotImplementedException();
    }

This works well when Items is given as null but when Items is given as a List it does not work … I think that the code bellow is not correct and cannot detect if “value” is a list or not … Any hints ?

if (value is IList<Object>)
            {
                if ((value as IList<Object>).Count == 0)
                {
                    return Visibility.Collapsed;
                }
                else
                {
                    return Visibility.Visible;
                }

Any hints on how to do this ?

Answer 1

You can’t cast your list to IList <Object>, but you can cast it to ICollection, and then use ICollection.Count : see http://devw.wordpress.com/2011/07/18/empty-list-visibility-converter/

public class EmptyListVisibilityConverter : IValueConverter
{
    public object Convert(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, CultureInfo culture)
    {
        if (value == null)
            return Visibility.Collapsed;
        else
        {
            ICollection list = value as ICollection;
            if (list != null)
            {
                if (list.Count == 0)
                    return Visibility.Collapsed;
                else
                    return Visibility.Visible;
            }
            else
                return Visibility.Visible;
        }
    }
    public object ConvertBack(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)

    {
        throw new NotImplementedException();
    }
}
<ListBox x:Name=”NameChoiceListBox”
         ItemsSource=”{Binding NamesList}”
         SelectedItem=”{Binding SelectedName, Mode=TwoWay}”
         ItemTemplate=”{StaticResource DataTemplateNameChoice}”
         Visibility=”{Binding NamesList, Converter={StaticResource EmptyListVisibilityConverter}}”>