6

I have some data that I want to present in a FlowDocument. This will basically be a view that explains the data in a friendly way, with section headers, paragraphs of text, etc., and which I will display in a FlowDocumentScrollViewer.

To this end, I would like to create a bulleted list (<List>) out of the contents of an ObservableCollection. I know how to do that with ItemsControl, but how do I do it for ListItem elements in a FlowDocument, since they're part of the TextElement class hierarchy rather than the Control hierarchy? Is there an equivalent of ItemsControl for text content inside a TextBlock or FlowDocument?

Edit: The article Sergey linked to is the perfect starting point. The only problem is that the article's code can only use a Section or a TableRowGroup as the items panel, and doesn't yet support using a <List>. But that was trivial to fix -- just a matter of adding this code at the end of ItemsContent.GenerateContent, just before the final else:

else if (panel is List)
    ((List) panel).ListItems.Add((ListItem) element);
Joe White
  • 94,807
  • 60
  • 220
  • 330

3 Answers3

9

What you are looking for is possible, but requires significant amount of coding. Fortunately, Vincent Van Den Berghe posted a nice article on the MSDN describing how to Create Flexible UIs With Flow Documents And Data Binding , including the code!

Sergey Aldoukhov
  • 22,316
  • 18
  • 72
  • 99
0

Instead of using a FlowDocument, you can use an ItemsControl and change the panel used to display items to a WrapPanel. This will allow you use the ItemsControl as you want, but change its display semantics to a WrapPanel (which I believe functions like a FlowDocument. You'd do it something like this:

<ItemsControl>
    <ItemsControl.ItemsPanelTemplate>
        <WrapPanel />
    </ItemsControl.ItemsPanelTemplate>
</ItemsControl>

You can set any properties on the inner WrapPanel as you desire.

Andy
  • 30,088
  • 6
  • 78
  • 89
  • I see where you're going, but no, that wouldn't use a WrapPanel, it would use a standard StackPanel (since list items are one above the other). Yes, it has crossed my mind to simply abandon FlowDocument and use normal controls, but FlowDocument has its benefits (select+copy, printing), so I'm still curious if there's a way to actually databind inside a FlowDocument. – Joe White Aug 10 '09 at 23:33
  • I think you missed his point (or i misunderstood your comment), you can replace the StackPanel by setting the ItemsPanelTemplate property, in his example the stackpanel would be replaced by a WrapPanel. You're right though, this doesn't accomplish what you want. – Bubblewrap Aug 11 '09 at 05:49
  • Sure, I got that. But if I'm generating a bulleted list, I don't *want* to replace the StackPanel with a WrapPanel. – Joe White Aug 11 '09 at 12:01
0

I think you are looking for the List element: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.documents.list.aspx

Bubblewrap points out a few more details. You'd likely bind to the ListItems property and need to use a ValueConverter to convert your source list to a list of type ListItemsCollection.

Bubblewrap points out that this is readonly and that the ListItemsCollection has an internal constructor. So...

I think what you'd have to do is this:

<ContentControl Content="{Binding TheArrayOfText, Converter={StaticResource StringsToListConverter}" />

This is pretty unfortunate, but I think it would work. You'd have to write a converter to create a new List object and call .Add( on each item.

Anderson Imes
  • 25,500
  • 4
  • 67
  • 82
  • 1
    But the List element doesnt support binding to an arbitrary collection to generate it's ListItems, does it? – Bubblewrap Aug 11 '09 at 05:53
  • The ListItems collection should. You'd have to convert whatever collection it was to a ListItemCollection (via a ValueConverter), but it would give you output in a completely supported and FlowDocumentesque way. – Anderson Imes Aug 11 '09 at 06:59
  • Except that the ListItems property is readonly and that one is not meant to create a ListItemsCollection themselves. (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.documents.listitemcollection.aspx) – Bubblewrap Aug 11 '09 at 07:10