Complex UI inside ListBoxItem

Question

In WPF, I can add whatever UI into ListBoxItems by providing the ListBox with an ItemTemplate:

 <ListBox ItemsSource="{Binding}">
            <ListBox.ItemTemplate>
                <DataTemplate>
                    <Border BorderThickness="1" BorderBrush="Gray" CornerRadius="8" Padding="4,0,4,0">
                        <Grid>
                            <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
                                <ColumnDefinition Width="50"/>
                                <ColumnDefinition/>
                            </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>

                            <Grid.RowDefinitions>
                                <RowDefinition/>
                                <RowDefinition/>
                                <RowDefinition/>
                            </Grid.RowDefinitions>

                            <CheckBox Grid.Column="1" Content="Is Active Customer" IsChecked="{Binding IsActive}"/>

                            <Label Content="Id:" Grid.Row="1" HorizontalAlignment="Right"/>
                            <Label Content="Name:" Grid.Row="2" HorizontalAlignment="Right"/>

                            <TextBox Text="{Binding Id}" Grid.Row="1" Grid.Column="1"/>
                            <TextBox Text="{Binding Name}" Grid.Row="2" Grid.Column="1"/>
                        </Grid>
                    </Border>
                </DataTemplate>
            </ListBox.ItemTemplate>
        </ListBox>

Results in:

Is there any way to achieve the same in Windows Forms?

Edit:

1 - Is there any way to achieve the same in Windows Forms, all while maintaining separation of concerns between the View and the Application Logic in such a way that if I later wanted to completely redefine the View, I wouldn't have to refactor the entire application?

2 - Does winforms support databinding in such a way that each of my ListBoxItems can be bound to a complex Entity, eventually including an intermediate type conversion from Model data to UI data and back, in such a way that I don't have to write tons of boilerplate code to populate the view and then pass the UI values back into the Model in order to save?

3 - What if I wanted to introduce Animations in such a way that the currently SelectedItem would animatedly expand itself into some kind of "Row Details" mode, where you can see a lot of additional information?

4 - Does winforms support UI Virtualization in such a way that if I have, say 1 million items it doesn't take a lifetime to load the UI, and only render what's visible on screen?

5 - Say I wanted to introduce complex graphics to the equation. Is winforms rendering hardware-accelerated?

6 - How do I make all this Resolution Independent in such a way that the ListBox and all its contents stretch to the available window size in order to leverage larger screens while maintaining compatibility with smaller ones?

7 - It's been suggested to use the ListView control instead of a regular ListBox, does the ListView provide the ability to add ANY UI into it? can I add Videos for example for each item? or a complex Master/Detail template with Save and edit Buttons?

8 - Does winforms provide a consistent and adequate Document Model that enables the creation of high-fidelity WYSIWYG documents and other types of rich content?

Tumbler

Beyond creating your own control, maybe this will work: #5209905 – Wintergreen

@JustinPihony does the ListView provide the ability to add ANY UI into it? can I add Videos for example for each item? or a complex Master/Detail template with Save and edit Buttons? Can you provide an example? – Tumbler

No, not easily..it'd be complex custom code I would imagine – Wintergreen

@HighCore Yeah it is possible, but you have to write a UserControl, which gets as DataContext the object. – Valentinavalentine

@Valentinavalentine can you elaborate on that? – Tumbler

Winforms is not designed to do what you are attempting out-of-the-box. If you want WPF capabilities, why not use WPF. – Garotte

@HighCore Oh you wanna do it in WF? That is not my area. I can show you how to do it in WPF... In WF maybe with an UserControl, which extends the ListBox and the ListBoxItem. – Valentinavalentine

Ugh, I hate WinForms...ListView won't help you by itself; it doesn't support any sort of complex bindings, if I recall correctly. I vaguely remember being able to mangle something together using a variety of attributes like Bindable and helpers like the TypeDescriptor, but it's been a long time since I've messed around in that world. – Barry

Answer 1

To answer the overarching question - how to do this in WinForms - I'd suggest the following:

1. Use a WPF ListBox in your WinForms application, wrapped in an ElementHost. This has its own issues, but I think it's the cleanest way to get the desired effect.

   if that doesn't fit the bill, then

2. Use a third party control suite that has components which support this (Infragistics and DevExpress both do).

3. Spin your own derived ListBox control that overrides paint, etc to render the desired content.

To your individual questions:

1. ^{Is there any way to achieve the same in Windows Forms, all while maintaining separation of concerns between the View and the Application Logic in such a way that if I later wanted to completely redefine the View, I wouldn't have to refactor the entire application?}
   In the past, I've used the MVP (model-view-presenter) paradigm with Windows Forms. It works for separating the view from the business logic, albeit not as cleanly as an MVVM approach with WPF. The best advice I can give is: don't put business logic in event handlers.

2. ^{Does winforms support databinding in such a way that each of my ListBoxItems can be bound to a complex Entity, eventually including an intermediate type conversion from Model data to UI data and back, in such a way that I don't have to write tons of boilerplate code to populate the view and then pass the UI values back into the Model in order to save?}
   No. Windows Forms databinding does not support complex data binding. You could implement something yourself via ICustomTypeDescriptor or IBindingSource that can take complex paths and evaluate them for binding purposes...but nothing exists out of the box for this.

3. ^{What if I wanted to introduce Animations in such a way that the currently SelectedItem would animatedly expand itself into some kind of "Row Details" mode, where you can see a lot of additional information?}
   You'd have to roll your own Windows Forms ListBox and ListBoxItems and override the paint operations.

4. ^{Does winforms support UI Virtualization in such a way that if I have, say 1 million items it doesn't take a lifetime to load the UI, and only render what's visible on screen?}
   Not out of the box, but some third party control suites have components that support types of virtualization...but not at all in the same way WPF does.

5. ^{Say I wanted to introduce complex graphics to the equation. Is winforms rendering hardware-accelerated?}
   Windows Forms is based on GDI+. GDI+ is not hardware accelerated: Windows Forms very slow under Windows7?

6. ^{How do I make all this Resolution Independent in such a way that the ListBox and all its contents stretch to the available window size in order to leverage larger screens while maintaining compatibility with smaller ones?}
   You can use Docking and Anchoring in Windows Forms to accomplish this. Or you can add custom event handlers to perform appropriate layout adjustments based on resolution and Window size.

7. ^{It's been suggested to use the ListView control instead of a regular ListBox, does the ListView provide the ability to add ANY UI into it? can I add Videos for example for each item? or a complex Master/Detail template with Save and edit Buttons?}
   This is simplifying...but a ListView is simply a ListBox that supports multiple view types. It is also more limited in terms of databinding. http://blog.gfader.com/2008/09/winforms-listbox-vs-listview.html.

8. ^{Does winforms provide a consistent and adequate [Document Model][2] that enables the creation of high-fidelity WYSIWYG documents and other types of rich content?}
   No. Not at all. Not even a little bit.

In short, if it's an acceptable solution, I'd wrap your WPF ListView in an ElementHost and call it a day.

Likeness

I'd add to #8: it sounds like @HighCore is thinking about Winforms VERY differently from how it is designed. It is NOT a document centric model. While it has evolved significantly, Winforms is really not all that different from how VB6 work(ed|s). The sooner you accept it for what it is the easier it will be to work with (or reject). – Titanothere

I'm quite impressed that you actually answered all 8-9 questions being asked here, +1 for effort. However, a couple of nitpicks to an otherwise good answer. First, on your number 3, you wouldn't actually roll your own ListBoxItems. Inheriting from ListBox, making it owner drawn, and writing the custom paint code would be sufficient and not all that difficult. Second, your number 4 is only partially correct. You're right that WinForms doesn't expose the virtual mode of the Win32 ListBox control, but a little P/Invoke fixes that up nicely. The style flag you'll want to add is LBS_NODATA. – Ilysa

... If you did switch to the ListView control (which I would actually recommend, contrary to the opinions of the author of the article you linked), you could simply set its VirtualMode property which is designed precisely for this purpose. ListViews support owner draw just like ListBoxes, so they're as customizable as you want to make them. – Ilysa

@HighCore Please consider not answering/commenting on questions that are about WinForms in particular. This is not a place to share your negative opinions about that technology. I agree with your opinion, for the record, but this is not the correct place to share that. – Mikvah

Answer 2

We did this by using UserControls in a scrollable panel. Prepared a user control which has all the editing control on it. Add them to a scrollable panel with dosk property is set to Top. Implemented the item selection behaviour by watching the focus and click events on the added user control items.

Fairbanks