Binding List<T> to DataGridView in WinForm

Question

I have a class

class Person{       public string Name {get; set;}       public string Surname {get; set;} } 

and a List<Person> to which I add some items. The list is bound to my DataGridView.

List<Person> persons = new List<Person>(); persons.Add(new Person(){Name="Joe", Surname="Black"}); persons.Add(new Person(){Name="Misha", Surname="Kozlov"}); myGrid.DataSource = persons; 

There is no problem. myGrid displays two rows, but when I add new items to my persons list, myGrid does not show new updated list. It only shows the two rows which I added before.

So what is the problem?

Rebinding every time works well. But when I bind a DataTable to the grid when every time when I make some changes to DataTable there is not any need to ReBind myGrid.

How to solve it without rebinding every time?

Answer 1

List does not implement IBindingList so the grid does not know about your new items.

Bind your DataGridView to a BindingList<T> instead.

var list = new BindingList<Person>(persons); myGrid.DataSource = list; 

But I would even go further and bind your grid to a BindingSource

var list = new List<Person>() {     new Person { Name = "Joe", },     new Person { Name = "Misha", }, }; var bindingList = new BindingList<Person>(list); var source = new BindingSource(bindingList, null); grid.DataSource = source; 

Answer 2

Every time you add a new element to the List you need to re-bind your Grid. Something like:

List<Person> persons = new List<Person>(); persons.Add(new Person() { Name = "Joe", Surname = "Black" }); persons.Add(new Person() { Name = "Misha", Surname = "Kozlov" }); dataGridView1.DataSource = persons;  // added a new item persons.Add(new Person() { Name = "John", Surname = "Doe" }); // bind to the updated source dataGridView1.DataSource = persons;