Bind WPF Extended Toolkit PropertyGrid to a dictionary or other dynamic source?

Question

I have an XML file with several child elements. Each child element contains a series of elements, but the XML schema is undocumented, so I cannot possibly account for every possible element name. My goal is to provide an editor view for each child element. For example:

XML File

<root>
    <element>
        <subelement1>value</subelement>
        <randomName88787>value</randomName>
        <somethingTotallyFunky>value</somethingTotallyFunky>
        <iHaveNoIdeaWhatThisWillBe>value</iHaveNoIdeaWhatThisWillBe>
    </element>
</root>

I was hoping to use the WPF Toolkit's PropertyGrid control (or something similar) to present a list of all child elements of <element>, but this control is designed to be bound to a CLR object. Of course I can't define a class with properties because I don't know what those properties will be. I've tried the following code to bind to an expando object:

var expando = new ExpandoObject();
var dict = (IDictionary<string, object>)expando;
foreach (var prop in unit.Elements())
{
    if (dict.ContainsKey(prop.Name.LocalName) == false)
    {
        dict.Add(prop.Name.LocalName, (string)prop.Value);
    }
}

Properties.SelectedObject = expando;

But no properties are displayed. It doesn't seem to handle ExpandoObject very well. Is there a better way to approach what I'm trying to do? A better control to do it with?

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 02 '12 at 22:53

Have a look at this, it should basically explain everything. In short, implementing ICustomTypeDescriptor (on a type derived from ExpandoObject) should work fine; I took a look at the Extended WPF Toolkit source code and I think it will handle it properly.

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 03 '12 at 20:19

Actually, you can do this without using any custom objects. Try this XAML with your example data in a file named data.xml:

<Window x:Class="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">
<Window.Resources>
    <XmlDataProvider x:Key="data" Source="data.xml" XPath="/root/element/*"/>
</Window.Resources>
<Grid>
    <ListView ItemsSource="{Binding Source={StaticResource data}}">
        <ListView.View>
            <GridView>
                <GridViewColumn Header="Tag" Width="100">
                    <GridViewColumn.CellTemplate>
                        <DataTemplate>
                            <Label Content="{Binding Path=Name}"/>
                        </DataTemplate>
                    </GridViewColumn.CellTemplate>
                </GridViewColumn>
                <GridViewColumn Header="Value" Width="100">
                    <GridViewColumn.CellTemplate>
                        <DataTemplate>
                            <TextBox Text="{Binding Path=InnerText}"/>
                        </DataTemplate>
                    </GridViewColumn.CellTemplate>
                </GridViewColumn>
            </GridView>
        </ListView.View>
    </ListView>
</Grid>
</Window>

I expect you'll find any values that are changed by the user in XmlDataProvider.Document, so saving that should persist the user's changes.

This worked beautifully, except that the textbox was not editable. Any thoughts? — Chris, Sep 03 '12 at 23:26

Bind WPF Extended Toolkit PropertyGrid to a dictionary or other dynamic source?

2 Answers2