The problem of multi-line text in a datagrid

[donnacha]

Hi folks,

has anybody managed to solve the long standing problem of having multi line text in a cell of a datagrid.

I know this has been around the forum for a while, but somebody may have cracked it.

 

Looking forward to see if there are any new ideas.

[Robby]

Which problem?

[donnacha]

I takeit you haven't tried displaying text in a datagrid that needs more than one line to display it. I know one can autosize a colume to fit the text, but my column must remain the same size. Thus try displaying a large amount of text in 1 of the rows and have that individual row resize and each other row resize to the number of lines necessary.

The word-wrap and multiline fields in the datagridtextboxcolumn do not seem to do the as the imply.

 

Thus there-in lies the problem

[Robby]

Sure I have, my solution to this was to display only the first n characters in that column. If this suits you let me know.

[donnacha]

Hi Robby,

I wish life was so simple, I have to display all the text in the grid and it can be any length from 1 to 1024 or larger. I know it can be done as there are commercial version of it available, but I am not in a position to use them as I need to have all the source code in my application.

 

So any ideas would be great.

 

I am currently getting around the problem by drawing my own datagrid with labels/testboxes/richtextboxes but this is very slow to draw (and vissible) if there is a lot of data.

[Robby]

Here's an untested approach, replace the default label in the ItemTemplate with a multiline textBox, the width property of a textBox is more managable then that of a label.

[donnacha]

Hi Robby,

I have never used ItemTemplate, but the help seems to indicate that they are only accessible for mobile wev forms. I am in a standard windows app.

 

Thanks

[Robby]

Not true, TemplateColumn can contain an ItemTemplate which can contain any control.

 

Here's a simple howTo http://authors.aspalliance.com/aspxtreme/webforms/controls/addingtemplatecolumnstodatagrid.aspx

[donnacha]

Hi Robby,

thanks for that, but again this is for web/asp. It isin't available for windows controls. And as far as I know the same word wrap problem does not exist for web style grids.

 

Thanks

[Robby]

You're kidding, this entire time I thought you were using Web forms. Sorry.

[IanMac]

So does anyone have any idea about how to do it in windows controls??