Question

Ok, I’m completely at a loss here. I’ve used DataAnnotations attribute DisplayName successfully using MVC model binding, and even with WPF/Silverlight model binding and of course it works just fine, but now I’m on a project that I’m forced to use VB.NET 3.5 WinForms.

I have a Linq2Sql model and I created a partial class for one of my classes and included a MetadataType attribute to point to a metadata class. I added a DisplayName attribute to a property in the metadata class. I then bind my datagridview with an IQueryable(Of mydatatype), but the column name in the grid is the Property’s name and not the DisplayName.

Am I missing something? Is there something else I need to do to get the datagridview to use the DisplayName?

In my Model class:

Imports System.ComponentModel
Imports System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations

<MetadataType(GetType(vwREVIEW_ECRMetadata))> _
Partial Class vwREVIEW_ECR
    Public Sub TestMethod()

    End Sub
End Class

Public Class vwREVIEW_ECRMetadata

    Private _ECRNumber As String
    <DisplayName("ECR #")> _
    Public Property ECRNumber() As String
        Get
            Return _ECRNumber
        End Get
        Set(ByVal value As String)
            _ECRNumber = value
        End Set
    End Property

End Class

In my Repository class:

Public Function GetAllECRsForLookup() As IQueryable(Of vwREVIEW_ECR)
    Return db.vwREVIEW_ECRs
End Function

In my Presenter class:

Public Sub GetData()
    view.FillData(model.GetFilteredECRsForLookup())
End Sub

In my View:

Public Sub FillData(ByVal data As System.Linq.IQueryable(Of vwREVIEW_ECR)) Implements ILookupECRView.FillData
    Me.uxECRData.DataSource = data
End Sub

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks

Answer 1

Ok, so I found a solution to my problem. Didn’t even think about it this way, but in ASP.NET & WPF, you get this behavior becuase of model binding behavior built in. WinForms has databinding as well, but isn’t just there for your. Though I could’ve “bound” my datagridview to my linq2sql generated object in the runtime, which would’ve accomplished what I needed, I needed to do this at design time, so instead, I modified my MVP to use ViewModels where needed, and bind the datagrid to that object at runtime to get my column names to look the way I want. The ViewModel is hooked up to the model and can pass the real values to it.

I based this approach on this blog, though I didn’t fully implement what he did:
http://aviadezra.blogspot.com/2009/08/mvp-mvvm-winforms-data-binding.html