How to Freeze columns of the Silverlight DataGrid and how to display selected row details in the DataGrid?

DataGrid

DataGrid control is one of the most important control in Silverlight to develop Line-of-Business (As per Wiki - Line of business (LOB) is a general term which often refers to a set of one or more highly related products which service a particular customer transaction or business need.) applications and is mostly used to List the records in tabular format.

Apart from listing the records, it also provides option to sort, re-arrange columns, resize columns, edit data etc.

This article is the continuation of my last article in Silverlight controls series, read last article here.

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How to Freeze columns of the Silverlight DataGrid?

In some scenario where we have number of columns appearing into the DataGrid, we might need to freeze few columns of the Grid so that it would be easier for the end user to scroll through rest of the columns and see the details.

To freeze first few columns of the Grid, we specify the FrozenColumnCount property of the DataGrid.

Code

<StackPanel>
<Button x:Name="Button1" Content="FillData" Click="Button1_Click" Height="30" Width="75" Margin="20, 10, 0, 20"/>
<sdk:DataGrid x:Name="DataGrid1" AutoGenerateColumns="True" FrozenColumnCount="2" />
</StackPanel>

Code behind

private void Button1_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
FillData();
}
private void FillData()
{
IList<Person> list = new List<Person>();
 
Person p = new Person
{
Age = 1,
FirstName = "Joe",
LastName = "Elan",
IsActive = true
};
Person p1 = new Person
{
Age = 15,
FirstName = "Mike",
LastName = "Bull",
IsActive = true
};
Person p2 = new Person
{
Age = 51,
FirstName = "Mukul",
LastName = "Alwa",
IsActive = true
};
Person p3 = new Person
{
Age = 31,
FirstName = "Sheo",
LastName = "Narayan",
IsActive = true
};
list.Add(p);
list.Add(p1);
list.Add(p2);
list.Add(p3);
DataGrid1.ItemsSource = list;
}
public class Person
{
public string FirstName { get; set; }
public string LastName { get; set; }
public int Age { get; set; }
public bool IsActive { get; set; }
} 

Output

How to display selected row details in the DataGrid?

In some scenario, we need to display complete details of selected records. We can do this by declaring a DataTemplate and attaching that template to the DataGrid.

Code

<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
<Grid.Resources>
<DataTemplate x:Name="RowDetails">
<StackPanel>
<TextBlock>First Name:</TextBlock>
<TextBlock Text="{Binding FirstName}"/>
<TextBlock>Last Name:</TextBlock>
<TextBlock Text="{Binding LastName}"/>
<TextBlock>Age:</TextBlock>
<TextBlock Text="{Binding Age}"/>
<TextBlock>IsActive:</TextBlock>
<TextBlock Text="{Binding IsActive}"/>
</StackPanel>
</DataTemplate>
</Grid.Resources>
<sdk:DataGrid x:Name="DataGrid1" RowDetailsTemplate="{StaticResource RowDetails}"
RowDetailsVisibilityMode="VisibleWhenSelected" AutoGenerateColumns="False">
<sdk:DataGrid.Columns>
<sdk:DataGridTextColumn Binding="{Binding FirstName}"/>
</sdk:DataGrid.Columns>
</sdk:DataGrid>
</Grid> 

In the above code snippet, you can see that we have declared a DataTemplate under Grid.Resources that contains the TextBlocks that binds the fields of the Data source.

In the DataGrid we have attached the DataTemplate by setting its RowDetailsTemplate property.

Code behind

public DataGridRowDetails()
{
InitializeComponent();
this.Loaded += new RoutedEventHandler(DataGridRowDetails_Loaded);
}
 
void DataGridRowDetails_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
this.FillData();
}
private void FillData()
{
IList<Person> list = new List<Person>();
 
Person p = new Person
{
Age = 1,
FirstName = "Joe",
LastName = "Elan",
IsActive = true
};
Person p1 = new Person
{
Age = 15,
FirstName = "Mike",
LastName = "Bull",
IsActive = true
};
Person p2 = new Person
{
Age = 51,
FirstName = "Mukul",
LastName = "Alwa",
IsActive = true
};
Person p3 = new Person
{
Age = 31,
FirstName = "Sheo",
LastName = "Narayan",
IsActive = true
};
list.Add(p);
list.Add(p1);
list.Add(p2);
list.Add(p3);
DataGrid1.ItemsSource = list;
}
public class Person
{
public string FirstName { get; set; }
public string LastName { get; set; }
public int Age { get; set; }
public bool IsActive { get; set; }
} 

Output

Hope this article was useful. Thanks for reading, hope you liked it.

Keep a watch on forth coming articles on Silverlight. To read my series of articles,click here.