List of <T> Bindings to DataGridView in WinForm

Question

I have a class

class Person{ public string Name {get; set;} public string Surname {get; set;} } 

and a List<Person> , to which I add some elements. The list is bound to my DataGridView .

 List<Person> persons = new List<Person>(); persons.Add(new Person(){Name="Joe", Surname="Black"}); persons.Add(new Person(){Name="Misha", Surname="Kozlov"}); myGrid.DataSource = persons; 

No problems. myGrid displays two rows, but when I add new items to the persons list, myGrid does not show a new updated list. It shows only two lines that I added earlier.

So what is the problem?

Re-binding works well every time. But when I snap the DataTable to the grid, when every time I make some changes to the DataTable , there is no need for a ReBind myGrid .

How to solve it without going over every time?

Answer 1

The list does not implement IBindingList , so the grid does not know about your new elements.

Bind your DataGridView to a BindingList<T> .

 var list = new BindingList<Person>(persons); myGrid.DataSource = list; 

But I would even go further and bind your grid to a BindingSource

 var list = new List<Person>() { new Person { Name = "Joe", }, new Person { Name = "Misha", }, }; var bindingList = new BindingList<Person>(list); var source = new BindingSource(bindingList, null); grid.DataSource = source; 

Answer 2

Each time you add a new item to the list, you need to re-snap your grid. Something like:

 List<Person> persons = new List<Person>(); persons.Add(new Person() { Name = "Joe", Surname = "Black" }); persons.Add(new Person() { Name = "Misha", Surname = "Kozlov" }); dataGridView1.DataSource = persons; // added a new item persons.Add(new Person() { Name = "John", Surname = "Doe" }); // bind to the updated source dataGridView1.DataSource = persons; 

Answer 3

After adding a new item to persons add:

 myGrid.DataSource = null; myGrid.DataSource = persons; 

Answer 4

Yes, using the INotifyPropertyChanged interface, you can do this without overwriting.

A pretty simple example is available here,

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.componentmodel.inotifypropertychanged.aspx