Windows Forms - Data Binding to a DataSource properties's property

Question

I've got a data binding source, and it has an associated property. When this source property is text/integer based etc, everything works fine. I can bind that to a text box or label okay.

Some of my properties are lists. This is also fine, I can create a new listBindingSource, point it's datasource at the origional binding source, and the datamember as the list and point my, say, listview at that. I set the DisplayMember to the property of the item in the list and it works fine.

However, if the property is neither list, or text/int, but just a single object... I'm stuck. There's no way of telling it I want to bind the properties's property to the object. There's no 'DisplayMember' to help.

An example:

I have an object MeteredSpace. It has the properties

public string Name {get;set;}
public List<MeteredSpace> ChildMeteredSpaces {get;set;}
public MeteredSpace ParentMeteredSpace {get;set;}

Then I define the following met

//underlying datasource
this.meteredSpaceBindingSource.DataSource = typeof(SEMS.LinqObjects.MeteredSpace);
//data source of children
this.childMeteredSpacesBindingSource.DataMember = "ChildMeteredSpaces";
this.childMeteredSpacesBindingSource.DataSource = this.meteredSpaceBindingSource;

Now for my controls:

//nice and easy, picking directly from the underlying data source
this.nameTextBox.DataBindings.Add(new System.Windows.Forms.Binding("Text",this.meteredSpaceBindingSource, "Name", true));

//our child metered space list box is pretty easy too:
this.meteredSpaceListBox.DataSource = this.childMeteredSpacesBindingSource;
this.meteredSpaceListBox.DisplayMember = "Name";

//then we come to our parent text box
this.nameTextBox.DataBindings.Add(new System.Windows.Forms.Binding("Text",this.meteredSpaceBindingSource, "ParentMeteredSpace", true));

I have no way of pointing it at ParentMeteredSpace's Name property like I do with the list box. I also can't create a nice new binding source for it.

Anyone know of a way around this? I had a look into overriding a control and adding my own DisplayMember, but I started to think there might be a better way of doing it.

Thanks

LarsTech LarsTech · Accepted Answer · 2014-06-24T15:23:03

You should be able to reference through the parent property:

Binding b = new Binding("Text",
                        this.meteredSpaceBindingSource,
                        "ParentMeteredSpace.Name",
                        true);
this.nameTextBox.DataBindings.Add(b);

Windows Forms - Data Binding to a DataSource properties's property

1 Answers