Binding a collection of objects to a ComboboxColumn in a DataGridView

Question

I have a GUI which allows the user to select a report to view/edit. When the user selects a report, it shows the Items in the report. The Item has many properties - most of which are binding properly. One of the properties is Owner, and this is bound to a ComboBoxColumn.

• Report
  • Items
    • Owner

I have done something very similar to this a few times and had no problems when I set the DataPropertyName, DataSource, ValueMember, and DisplayMember. The only difference is that this time instead of the Item type having an OwnderID it actually has an instance of the Owner object.

I saw a suggestion on another post to solve this issue by giving the items bound in the list a self-referencing property that allows them to return themselves for the purposes of setting the ValueMember

However, When I bind it this way:

OwnerColumn.DataPropertyName = "Owner"
OwnerColumn.DataSource = ownersBindingSource1
OwnerColumn.ValueMember = "Self"
OwnerColumn.DisplayMember = "OwnerName"

I get a lot of errors like:

Unable to cast object of type 'System.String' to type 'Owner'.

and:

The following exception occurred in the DataGridView:

System.ArgumentException: DataGridViewComboBoxCell value is not valid.

To replace this default dialog please handle the DataError event.

I was able to get around some of these errors by binding it like this:

OwnerColumn.DataPropertyName = "Owner"
OwnerColumn.DataSource = ownersBindingSource1

and also by making the ToString function on the Owner display the OwnerName property. This seems pretty hacky though - and I think I'm misunderstanding something fundamental as it still does not function properly. Any help would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

I found out that a lot of my errors were coming from my misunderstanding of various articles I had read, as well as sloppy code.

I neglected to specify the return type on a few of the properties, option explicit / option strict were both off, and there had been some corruption in my designer and a few of the columns were duplicated.

A solution to this that I liked the most was: http://code.google.com/p/systembusinessobjects/source/browse/trunk/System.BusinessObjects.Framework/Data/SafeBindingLists.cs . Unfortunately, this requires Castle proxy, and an older version of NHibernate.

Here is the simple solution that I found:

The issue is that you cannot bind a list with objects of multiple types. The goal is to be able to have the ComboBox directly set the value of a property on the object it is bound to with another object.

I chose to use a View object, and bind the list to that.

View Object:

Public Class OwnerView
    Private _owner As Owner

    Public ReadOnly Property OwnerId As Integer
        Get
            Return _owner.OwnerId
        End Get
    End Property

    Public ReadOnly Property OwnerName As String
        Get
            Return _owner.OwnerName
        End Get
    End Property

    Public ReadOnly Property OwnerAbbreviation As String
        Get
            Return _owner.OwnerAbbreviation
        End Get
    End Property

    Public Overridable ReadOnly Property Self As Owner
        Get
            Return _owner
        End Get
    End Property

    Public Sub New(ByVal owner As Owner)
        _owner = owner
    End Sub

End Class

Binding:

With OwnerColumn
    .SortMode = DataGridViewColumnSortMode.Automatic
    .ReadOnly = False
    .Name = "OwnerColumn"
    .HeaderText = "Owner"

    Dim bs As New BindingSource()

    For Each co As Owner In Owners
        bs.Add(New OwnerView(co))
    Next

    .DataPropertyName = "Owner"
    .DataSource = bs
    .ValueMember = "Self"
    .DisplayMember = "OwnerName"

    ItemDataGridView.Columns.Add(OwnerColumn)
End With