How to bind "DataGrid.Items" with ObservableCollection<SomeType[]>?

Question

I am looking for way to bind Avalonia DataGrid.Items with ObservableCollection<SomeType[]> collection. So, row is array of SomeType[] where every element is value for DataGrid cell. Is it possible? Now it binding fields of class Array instead of binding elements and I know, it is a usual way. But I need to do it dynamically when I don't know how many columns it can take. Like DataTable.DefaultView and DataGrid in .NET.

In my XAML it look like this:

<DataGrid AutoGenerateColumns="True" Items="{Binding Rows}"/>

where Rows is ObservableCollection<string[]> Rows { get; set; } inside my view model.

Answer 1

In short: You can't do that via AutoGenerateColumns.

Let's suppose I've this simplified UI:

<Window x:Class="_Test.MainWindow"
        xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
        xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
        Title="MainWindow" Height="450" Width="800">
    <Grid>
        <DataGrid x:Name="Grid"></DataGrid>
    </Grid>
</Window>

Then If I specify the Grid's ItemsSource like this:

public MainWindow()
{
    InitializeComponent();
    var dataSource = new ObservableCollection<string[]>
    {
        new []{ "A", "B", "C"},
        new []{ "C", "B", "A"},
    };
    Grid.ItemsSource = dataSource;
}

Then I would see the following result:

So, it shows the arrays' properties instead of their content.

---

In order to list their content you need to manually add the columns to the Grid:

foreach (var idx in dataSource[0].Select((value, index) => index))
{
    Grid.Columns.Add(new DataGridTextColumn { Header = $"{idx + 1}. column", Binding = new Binding($"[{idx}]") });
}

Let's put everything together:

public MainWindow()
{
    InitializeComponent();
    var dataSource = new ObservableCollection<string[]>
    {
        new []{ "A", "B", "C"},
        new []{ "C", "B", "A"},
    };

    foreach (var idx in dataSource[0].Select((value, index) => index))
    {
        Grid.Columns.Add(new DataGridTextColumn { Header = $"{idx + 1}. column", Binding = new Binding($"[{idx}]") });
    }

    Grid.AutoGenerateColumns = false;
    Grid.ItemsSource = dataSource;
}

and the result will be:

Credit goes to har07