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This article is one of the initial ones in the series that will demonstrate use of DataGrid control in Silverlight to render data
from various data sources. My goal here is not to tell you what DataGrid class is or proand cons of DataGrid. We all have used
DataGrid in some form or the other in ASP.Net and/or Windows applications. So my intent is to simple outline the steps that you
will need to follow to create a simple DataGrid and bind it to a datasource to display the data. In this article I will not go into
details about how you can have better control to formatting of results. I will keep it simple. In subsequent articles I will explain more
about controlling formatting of each data column or row in the grid.
Getting started
Like any other Silverlight application, you will start with a new Silverlight application project. Simply drag DataGrid control from
toolbox into the page. We will make use of AutoGenerateColumns property of DataGrid to let it generate all the columns
automatically returned with data source. In next set of articles I will demonstrate how you can control what columns to display and what
not to display. So XAML on page looks like as below.
<data:DataGrid x:Name="AdventureWorks_Grid"
AutoGenerateColumns="True" Height="200"
Grid.Column="0" Grid.Row="2"
GridLinesVisibility="Horizontal" />
You can see from snippet above how I have specified few properties to set height of grid and display of horizontal grid lines.
Connect to data
Now we have defined DataGrid control. Only thing left is to connect this grid with data source. You can set ItemsSource or
DataContext property of DataGrid to a collection object that implements IEnumerable interface. For the sample project
attached with this article I have implemented an ADO.Net DataService that can be used to query data from sample Adventureworks database
in SQL2005. Following code how query is being made to ADO.Net data service to get all items in Product table in the database and then
returned results are bound to DataGrid.
private void LoadProductsData()
{
DataServiceContext ctx = new DataServiceContext
(new Uri("http://localhost/SilverDataGridWeb/AdventureDaraService.svc"));
ctx.BeginExecute
(new Uri("Product", UriKind.Relative), ProductsLoadCallback, ctx);
}
private void ProductsLoadCallback(IAsyncResult asyncResult)
{
DataServiceContext ctx =
asyncResult.AsyncState as DataServiceContext;
List products =
ctx.EndExecute(asyncResult).ToList();
AdventureWorks_Grid.ItemsSource = products;
}
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