How to prevent the width of a text field from expanding outside its container?

Question

I want the text box to grow in size until it fills its container. If you put an empty text field in a WPF window, it will increase in size (as the user enters text into it) until it fills the container, after which it will no longer expand in size.

However, if I put this text field in a grid, the text field does not stop growing. And even a stranger, if I rigidly set a fixed width on the grid columns, even the STILL text box will continue to grow.

I want the text field to increase and the grid to increase, but as soon as the grid can no longer grow, I want the text field to stop growing too. It can be done?

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Here is a quick example. When you enter text in a text box, it will increase in size (optional). However, the text box will continue to grow even after the grid fills out the WPF form completely.

<Window x:Class="WpfApplication1.MainWindow" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" Title="MainWindow" Height="350" Width="525" Name="window"> <Grid> <Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <ColumnDefinition Width="Auto" /> <ColumnDefinition Width="Auto" /> </Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <TextBlock Grid.Column="0" Text="StackOverflow"/> <TextBox Grid.Column="1"/> </Grid> </Window> 

Answer 1

Setting the width of the second column definition for "*" should provide you with the desired functionality.

Also, set MinWidth in the text box and HorizontalAlignment to Left so that it doesn't stretch to the width of the column. If you want it to stretch, remove this property.

In this example, I added an extra column with a width of 50 to emphasize that the text box will stop growing as soon as it reaches the border of the column width.

 <Grid> <Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <ColumnDefinition Width="Auto" /> <ColumnDefinition Width="*" /> <ColumnDefinition Width="50" /> </Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <TextBlock Grid.Column="0" Text="StackOverflow" /> <TextBox Grid.Column="1" HorizontalAlignment="Left" MinWidth="50" /> </Grid>