Expanders in Grid

Question

This is going to be straight forward no doubt, but for what ever reason, my mind is drawing a blank on it.

I've got a small, non-resizeable window (325x450) which has 3 Expanders in it, stacked vertically. Each Expander contains an ItemsControl that can potentially have a lot of items in and therefore need to scroll.

What I can't seem to get right is how to layout the Expanders so that they expand to fill any space that is available without pushing other elements off the screen. I can sort of achieve what I'm after by using a Grid and putting each expander in a row with a * height, but this means they are always taking up 1/3 of the window each which defeats the point of the Expander :)

Crappy diagram of what I'm trying to achieve:

Answer 1

This requirement is a little unusal because the you want the state of the Children in the Grid to decide the Height of the RowDefinition they are in.
I really like the layout idea though and I can't believe I never had a similar requirement myself.. :)

For a reusable solution I would use an Attached Behavior for the Grid.
The behavior will subscribe to the Attached Events Expander.Expanded and Expander.Collapsed and in the event handlers, get the right RowDefinition from Grid.GetRow and update the Height accordingly. It works like this

<Grid ex:GridExpanderSizeBehavior.SizeRowsToExpanderState="True">
    <Grid.RowDefinitions>
        <RowDefinition />
        <RowDefinition />
        <RowDefinition />
    </Grid.RowDefinitions>
    <Expander Grid.Row="0" ... />
    <Expander Grid.Row="1" ... />
    <Expander Grid.Row="2" ... />
    <!-- ... -->
</Grid>

And here is GridExpanderSizeBehavior

public class GridExpanderSizeBehavior
{
    public static DependencyProperty SizeRowsToExpanderStateProperty =
        DependencyProperty.RegisterAttached("SizeRowsToExpanderState",
                                            typeof(bool),
                                            typeof(GridExpanderSizeBehavior),
                                            new FrameworkPropertyMetadata(false, SizeRowsToExpanderStateChanged));
    public static void SetSizeRowsToExpanderState(Grid grid, bool value)
    {
        grid.SetValue(SizeRowsToExpanderStateProperty, value);
    }
    private static void SizeRowsToExpanderStateChanged(object target, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
    {
        Grid grid = target as Grid;
        if (grid != null)
        {
            if ((bool)e.NewValue == true)
            {
                grid.AddHandler(Expander.ExpandedEvent, new RoutedEventHandler(Expander_Expanded));
                grid.AddHandler(Expander.CollapsedEvent, new RoutedEventHandler(Expander_Collapsed));
            }
            else if ((bool)e.OldValue == true)
            {
                grid.RemoveHandler(Expander.ExpandedEvent, new RoutedEventHandler(Expander_Expanded));
                grid.RemoveHandler(Expander.CollapsedEvent, new RoutedEventHandler(Expander_Collapsed));
            }
        }
    }
    private static void Expander_Expanded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
    {
        Grid grid = sender as Grid;
        Expander expander = e.OriginalSource as Expander;
        int row = Grid.GetRow(expander);
        if (row <= grid.RowDefinitions.Count)
        {
            grid.RowDefinitions[row].Height = new GridLength(1.0, GridUnitType.Star); 
        }
    }
    private static void Expander_Collapsed(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
    {
        Grid grid = sender as Grid;
        Expander expander = e.OriginalSource as Expander;
        int row = Grid.GetRow(expander);
        if (row <= grid.RowDefinitions.Count)
        {
            grid.RowDefinitions[row].Height = new GridLength(1.0, GridUnitType.Auto);
        }
    }
}

Answer 2

If you don't mind a little code-behind, you could probably hook into the Expanded/Collapsed events, find the parent Grid, get the RowDefinition for the expander, and set the value equal to * if its expanded, or Auto if not.

For example,

Expander ex = sender as Expander;
Grid parent = FindAncestor<Grid>(ex);
int rowIndex = Grid.GetRow(ex);

if (parent.RowDefinitions.Count > rowIndex && rowIndex >= 0)
    parent.RowDefinitions[rowIndex].Height = 
        (ex.IsExpanded ? new GridLength(1, GridUnitType.Star) : GridLength.Auto);

And the FindAncestor method is defined as this:

public static T FindAncestor<T>(DependencyObject current)
where T : DependencyObject
{
    // Need this call to avoid returning current object if it is the 
    // same type as parent we are looking for
    current = VisualTreeHelper.GetParent(current);

    while (current != null)
    {
        if (current is T)
        {
            return (T)current;
        }
        current = VisualTreeHelper.GetParent(current);
    };
    return null;
}