winForms + DataGridView binding to a List<T>

Question

I'm trying to bind a List<T> to a DataGridView control, and I'm not having any luck creating custom bindings.

I have tried:

gvProgramCode.DataBindings.Add(new Binding("Opcode",code,"Opcode")); 

It throws an exception, saying that nothing was found by that property name.

The name of the column in question is "Opcode". The name of the property in the List<T> is Opcode.

ANSWER EDIT: the problem was that I did not have the bindable fields in my class as properties, just public fields...Apparently it doesn't reflect on fields, just properties.

Answer 1

Is the property on the grid you are binding to Opcode as well?.. if you want to bind directly to List you would just DataSource = list. The databindings allows custom binding. are you trying to do something other than the datasource?

You are getting a bunch of empty rows? do the auto generated columns have names? Have you verified data is in the object (not just string.empty) ?

    class MyObject     {         public string Something { get; set; }         public string Text { get; set; }         public string Other { get; set; }     }      public Form1()     {         InitializeComponent();          List<MyObject> myList = new List<MyObject>();          for (int i = 0; i < 200; i++)         {             string num = i.ToString();             myList.Add(new MyObject { Something = "Something " + num , Text = "Some Row " + num , Other = "Other " + num  });         }          dataGridView1.DataSource = myList;     } 

this should work fine...

Answer 2

I can't really tell what you're trying to do with the example you included, but binding to a generic list of objects is fairly straightforward if you just want to list the objects:

    private BindingSource _gridSource;      private BindingSource GridSource     {         get         {             if (_gridSource == null)                 _gridSource = new BindingSource();             return _gridSource;         }     }      private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)     {         List<FluffyBunny> list = new List<FluffyBunny>();         list.Add(new FluffyBunny { Color = "White", EarType = "Long", Name = "Stan" });         list.Add(new FluffyBunny { Color = "Brown", EarType = "Medium", Name = "Mike" });         list.Add(new FluffyBunny { Color = "Mottled", EarType = "Short", Name = "Torvald" });          GridSource.DataSource = list;         dataGridView1.Columns["EarType"].Visible = false; //Optionally hide a column         dataGridView1.DataSource = GridSource;      } 

If you only want to display specific properties of the List's type you should be able to make the unwanted column(s) invisible.

Technically, you don't really need to create the BindingSource, but I find it's a whole lot easier when I'm doing updates or changes if I have it.

Hope this helps.