Winforms: FlowLayoutPanel with Docking

Question

This is in winforms. I am creating a User control that is basically a FlowlayoutControl filled with other User Controls. I need each of the controls added to be docked to the top of the previous (from left to right). Unfortunately it looks like the flowlayoutcontrol ignores any of the docking properties. Is there any way to dock the controls inside there? I need it to fill the item from left to right, but the items should be laid out like a list view. Theres really no code i can provide due to the fact that its a matter of figuring out what approach to take.

Answer 1

Getting the FlowLayoutPanel to dock right is tricky. From the original question, you want something like a list view. It's important to know that ONE of the items in your list (the widest one) defines a "virtual column" in the FlowLayoutPanel. The rest of the items will follow it. You can prove this in the VS designer by dragging one of the items to the right. The 'virtual column' will follow it, and if your other items are anchored they will follow the virtual column.

Note that you can't anchor the control that is defining the column. It has nothing to anchor to and strange things will happen.

Do do all this programatically, handle the Layout event on your FlowLayoutPanel and put code similar to the code below. It's important that in the designer all the items in your list are not docked and and have their anchoring set to 'none'. I spent a day on this yesterday and doing that in the designer is what made the code below work.

flowLayoutPanel.Controls[0].Dock = DockStyle.None;                
flowLayoutPanel.Controls[0].Width = flowLayoutPanel.DisplayRectangle.Width - lowLayoutPanel.Controls[0].Margin.Horizontal;

for (int i = 1; i < flowLayoutPanel.Controls.Count; i++)
{
    flowLayoutPanel.Controls[i].Dock = DockStyle.Top;
}