Are there any good free/cheap Delphi grid controls?

Question

I gave up on Delphi's DBGrid nearly a decade ago because it is simply no good. Since then, I have used Virtual TreeView which offers a lot of value but it has a few issues. Like the current state of development (e.g. None) and the fact that there is no good data-bound version. DevExpress's QuantumGrid is famous for the rich feature set but is really quite expensive. I reckon that its huge feature set is probably overkill for 95% of the general use cases for data-bound grid controls.

Does anyone know of a data-bound grid control that sports the following features:

1. Checkboxes for boolean fields. How obvious is that?
2. More effective way of dealing with editors, i.e. no need to click three or four times to get the pick list to show.
3. Has to be data-bound.
4. Modern-looking. Possibly using XP themes, but being skinnable is preferable.
5. Flexible owner-drawing. This is one of the great features of Virtual Treeview - you can literally replace any part of the cell drawing without upsetting the rest. Painting is done in a series of layers, and you opt to replace only the layers you need to modify.
6. Wrappable lines, or at least tooltips that pop up and show the content that has been truncated for display.

I seldom use editing within a grid control, so the editing features need not be fantastic.

Any good suggestions?

Massey

What version of Delphi? If Delphi 2006 or earlier, you can get the free version of the LMD ElPack package. See my answer below. – Pride

Answer 1

Virtual TreeView is very much alive and development is continuing. See its new home here: http://code.google.com/p/virtual-treeview/

Conker

That's interesting. I still visited the soft-gems.net home page a few months back and didn't notice any mention of it. I don't see any mention of any new attempts at doing a TVirtualDBTree though, and the last few I tried were all quite buggy :-( – Massey

Yup, I only ran across the link to the new repository a few days ago, more or less by accident, while looking for a patch for a worker thread bug (I still need to support D5.) The new repository is awesome since it benefits from the Google Code infrastructure - the ability to cherry-pick and easily contribute patches should instil new life into this component. – Boorer

I'm a little disappointed that this still appears to be the single-most capable option, even though it doesn't fit very well with datasets and hasn't been actively maintained for a while. Hopefully the creation of the Google code repository will reignite the spin-offs and give us a decent DB-aware version. – Massey

Answer 2

NiceGrid

TSMDBGrid

If you are using Delphi 6 or 7 you can get free NextGrid component, if you don't, you can buy the full version with source code for very low price, it's fast and has nice looking grid.

Limacine

Answer 3

Oooppppsss!

It's already added. Excuse-me.

You can see this, from Scalabium.
It's free and Sources included. See the images at link.

Regards.

Proem

This is a really great DBGrid ! Just give it a try, you will not regret it. – Met

Answer 4

I also had some problems with the pricing of the DevExress Quantumgrid. However, if you are a serious Delphi developer and make a living out of it, I think the DevExpress controls are well worth the investment. DevExp also seems to have picked up Delphi development once again.

Packaging

Unfortunately, not all serious Delphi developers that make a living out of it work for themselves and live in the first world. If we all did, the price might seem reasonable. Some of us work for organisations with a lot of source code and enough developers to make QuantumGrid a huge investment that is hard to motivate. – Massey

This is especially true, since the Delphi grid does not even have some of the most basic grid functionality - tragic, given that a large part of its market is database apps. So QuantumGrid may offer great value for all of its functionality, but $400 is a bizarre amount to pay if you mostly need checkboxes for boolean values. – Massey

Answer 5

I have had good luck with NextGrid.

It is extremely fast and Boki (the developer) gives very good support.

http://www.bergsoft.net/

Copolymer

Answer 6

You could try ElTree that comes with the free SE Version of the LMD ElPack package: http://www.lmdinnovative.com/mfs/products/lmdelpack.php

It is described as:

ElTree is a fully customizable visual component, that can represent virtually any type data (both in hierarchical and list forms). It is excellent for exploring databases, directory structures, registries, or any other type of data that is built up like a tree. You don't need to use the combination of TTreeView and TListView anymore - TElTree gives you all their power. ElTree is also very useful for building multi-columned list boxes, radio groups and CheckLists. And it adds full Unicode support.

I've been using ElTree in my application for many years, both as as tree in one part of the program, and as a grid in several other parts. I took a look a while back at Virtual TreeView, but I saw no compelling reason to change.

LMD ElPack SE is designed for users, who are interested in the ElTree component only. I think it meets all your qualifications.

Its last supported IDE is Delphi 2006. If you need it for Delphi 2009, you would need to upgrade to one of their non-free packages.

See also the question: What is the best GRID and TREE control: and also my answer to that question.

Pride

Answer 7

If we'd been voting I'd say TSMDBGrid. İt is almost perfect. Just a few days ago I checked its source code to see how it uses the filter edit (to exploit it, of course).

It is free too.

Boart

Answer 8

I'm not sure the price point that you would consider cheap, but we have had good success with X-DBGrid.

Clymer

Answer 9

TMS Software have a data aware version of there TAdvStringGrid component.

You can download a trial and there are some sample applications for the TDBAdvGrid available.

Patricia

@rajeem_cariazo It is only € 95 for a single developer license. It depends on what you consider cheap. – Patricia