Sort List Control

Mark Jackson

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6 Sep 20012 min read

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A list control with inbuilt sorting, and an easier way to add columns and rows

Download demo project - 15 Kb

Introduction

This adds sorting to MFC's list control class. Sorting is automatically taken care of: it will sort text, dates and numbers in ascending or descending order, and show an arrow in the appropriate direction in the heading for the sorted column. It also adds some other things that make life easier when using list controls - it is much easier to set the columns and add rows, and it can load and save the column widths.

How to use it

Look at the example to see how it is used. You need to add the files SortListCtrl.cpp/h and SortHeaderCtrl.cpp/h to your project, then associate a CSortListCtrl variable with your list control (you can do this with ClassWizard).

In the OnInitDialog member function of your dialog class you set the columns and their initial widths by calling the list control's SetHeadings function, it takes a string, or a string ID in the string table, which defines the column headings and their widths,

e.g.

m_ctlList.SetHeadings( _T("Name,120;Date of Birth,90;Score,50") );

Adding rows is very easy, you call the list control's AddItem function with the same number of strings as the number of columns you added,

e.g.

m_ctlList.AddItem( _T("Mark Jackson"), _T("09/08/1974"), _T("100") );

To remember the columns' widths call the list control's LoadColumnInfo function after setting the headings, add a handler for your dialog's WM_DESTROY message and in there call SaveColumnInfo.

Implementation

It was a REAL pain to do, your callback function gets the item data for the two rows to compare, but what use is that, you need the text to compare! This control stores the text for the columns in the item data, so the compare function can get at it, it also allows users of the control to use the item data as usual.

Credits

The code for drawing the arrow in the header control was written by Zafir Anjum

License

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