WPF DataGrid full row selection

Question

I'm using WPF and .NET 4.0. Recently in one of my programs I switched from using ListView with GridView to DataGrid.

I want to be able to select and highlight the whole row like I was able to do in ListView.

In ListView, when I click on the empty space right from the last column, I'm still able to select the row. The whole row is highlighted, not only the cells.

In DataGrid however, after setting SelectionMode="Single" and SelectionUnit="FullRow", the row is selectable only when I click on any cell in it, not in the empty space right to the last column.

How can I use the highlighting behavior from ListView here?

Answer 1

There are two solutions:

1. Set the width of the last column in the DataGrid to Width="*".
2. The second solution is a workaround. Add an additional empty column after the last column (i.e. neither setting its Header nor Binding properties) and set its width to Width="*"

I personally prefer the first solution; it's cleaner than the second one.

Answer 2

There is one more solution if you can use code behind in your project. You can handle mouse down event of datagrid and programmatically select the clicked row:

 private void SomeGridMouseDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e)
    {
        var dependencyObject = (DependencyObject)e.OriginalSource;

        //get clicked row from Visual Tree
        while ((dependencyObject != null) && !(dependencyObject is DataGridRow))
        {
            dependencyObject = VisualTreeHelper.GetParent(dependencyObject);
        }

        var row = dependencyObject as DataGridRow;
        if (row == null)
        {
            return;
        }

        row.IsSelected = true;
    }