How to get control to do customized function when click property in PropertyGrid

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Normally, there is 'Color' property in PropertyGrid, when user click the icon at the end of 'value' item of property, the PropertyGrid object will automatically support the dedicated color dialog for this 'Color' property for user to edit the color data.

My questions are :

<1> How can I get the control when clicking this icon, so that I can open the ColorDialog instead of the build-in color dialog ?

<2> In general, I would like to get the control when clicking this icon for such as Boolean property, Font property etc., can anyone provide any solution or detailed reference code ? Thanks.

Posted 7-Mar-11 18:16pm

Sports Kuo

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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-07T19:34:00

Solution 1

I already answered a similar Question. This is not easy, but doable. Please see this Question and my Answer: How to get response when click PropertyGrid[^]. (See my "long" Answer.)

Please don't say my Answer is irrelevant from the first glance: it is relevant, but the ideology of PropertyGrid is maybe very different from what you might expect. The idea is not modifying the behavior if this control. Instead, you should create you own control(s) to embed in the grid. To use them, you need to create a special data type to wrap your real data. You should assign an instance of your wrapper data type to the property PropertyGrid.Selected object instead of reference to your "real" data object.

Nevertheless, this approach can be very universal: you can develop your customized controls and the wrapper the way it will suite nearly all data classes/structures you need. Don't think you need to repeat this work for every specific data type.

—SA

Posted 7-Mar-11 19:34pm

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov

Updated 7-Mar-11 19:42pm

v2

Comments

Sports Kuo 8-Mar-11 2:49am

=============================================
Thanks so much of your comments.
May I have some questions below :
1> I've read your previous 'long answer', I seems understand, but also may not understand it completely. Could you provide some kind of completedly workable and simple code including all the related structure(such as interface declaration and implementation etc...) ?
Since I may can not put all together by myself, as to ask for Microsoft help, it seems be not easy, since the infomration from Microsoft web site can be very speratedly. (not be integrated with whole reference code to easily understand)
2> At the end of your previous answer, you mentioned that “For a complete course on my enumeration techniques please see my series of three CodeProject articles on Enumeration topics, please find them in my CodeProject profile”, may I know Which keywords should I input ? (I've input keywords "Enumeration", it shows tree articles with your worderful name, however, the content of articles seems be not related to my question ?
Thanks again.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 8-Mar-11 3:38am

(1) Providing my code is not easy at all. I did it and though to publish as an article, but it will take a lot of time and effort. And the code is much bigger than the usual library. And I have other publication waiting in line. Sorry to say, I cannot afford changing my priority, so I'm afraid you would wait way too long time. At the same time, you can follow my line of directions, read help on each API I cited and implement the code. It could be even faster than a derivative work from my code, because your requirements can be very different. Seriously, it could be faster. Also, if you have problem down the road, I might be able to help with some.

(2) Why searching anything by keywords? I'll just tell you. I don't have so many Article on CodeProject. Click on my profile ("SAKryukov" HREF above this comment), on that page click "Articles" and you will see. Three last Article on Enumeration, the last one have 3 references as well. How it is related? In my original code I needed a very important customization of Properties to show and edit enumerations properly and in human readable way. Later I refined the technique in my new works on enumerations published in the mentioned Articles.

Will you formally accept my Answer?
I'll tell you, anyway, there is no any other way except creating your own PropertyGrid control from scratch based on Reflection (quite a different approach)...

--SA

Sports Kuo 8-Mar-11 20:50pm

----------------------------------------------
(Sorry, the above comment is kept as true, it is just deleted without care.)

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 8-Mar-11 20:57pm

OK, thank you for accepting my Answer.
Good luck,
--SA

Sports Kuo 16-Mar-11 1:39am

============================================================
Thanks of your prompt response of my question.
I've clicked the line on your name to enter into your profile in CodeProject, however I can't find out any 'contact me' page ! Any step I miss to reach it ? Could you provide detailed steps for it ? Thanks.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 16-Mar-11 2:49am

No, my Web site is found on this page. SAKryukov.org.
--SA

Sports Kuo 18-Mar-11 2:20am

==========================================================
Thanks so much, I got it finally.
Please see my attached file, and so nice if I can have your early response.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 18-Mar-11 2:58am

I got your messages (2), but I asked for complete source text, including text of project and solution files. It should better compile, if you can do it, and sent as ZIP or RAR archive.
--SA

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 22-Mar-11 18:55pm

I took a look at your code. What do you expect if you did not even try to implement custom behavior. Look at your UIMultipleTextAttribute. You applied it to your test string field, good. Understand, where is you library and where is your text code.

This attribute is unknown to the text code. How your library can possibly know about it?!!! This attribute must be know to PropertySurrogate. This class should look at data type and members (using reflection and say: aha, this is marked with UIMultipleTextAttribute; it means I need to apply a special editor!).

Look at my reference again, I explain this part.

After all, go to each class/interface (you have them all in your code, and read help on them)

Good luck.

--SA

Sports Kuo 23-Mar-11 7:25am

=====================================================
Thanks of your kind response.
I've sent message from your home page, but it shows :
"Internal Server Error", and failed in sending.

So I write it below for your reference.

-----------------------------------------------
Sorry to disturb you all the way, and thanks of taking a look at my simple code.
Though I’ve taken much time to study and written out this simple code, it still is not really finished to work, since I have no idea of your words below for UIMultilineTextAttribute issue :

Using Reflection, we need to look at every property of the target object type, find out what editor should be used (if any) and pass this information to implementation of System.ComponentModel.ICustomTypeDescriptor.GetEditor. This implementation should also use the editor type, so it ultimately brings us to the editor itself.

May I ask for your kind help to insert lines into the following class in my simple code to let it work ?

public class UIMultipleTextAttribute : Attribute
{
// please help to insert the workable lines for my reference
}

Plus, if there are other items not implemented well, could you also insert the right lines for it ? Just let this simple code work with minimum function ! Could you send back the final workable code to my e-mail sportskuo@yahoo.com.tw ?

After that, I suppose I then can image what the complete structure is, and do more complicated functions base on it. Is my request too much ? But I believe you will help me again, Thanks.

Note : The expected scenario of my simple code
1. click ‘Create PropertyGrid’ button, to show a PropertyGrid.
2. click property of ‘InputString’, expect to show a new ‘more’ button on the right hand of the value field of this property (or what ?, could you correct it ?)
3. click the new ‘more’ button, to show a specific ‘TextBox’ for editing the property of ‘InputString’.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 23-Mar-11 20:42pm

Please try again, my site could be down for a moment. It happens not often.
--SA

Sports Kuo 28-Mar-11 22:14pm

I've visited your home page and send some message with attached zip file at 03/24/2011, may I know if the sending is successfully ? Do you receive it ? Thanks.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 28-Mar-11 22:36pm

Yes. Please re-read my response to your first version of the code. New one is the same. If you don't understand it, do the following: create two projects: a library and a test/demo. You put attribute in test instead of library. Explain to yourself, how can it possibly work. See my detailed comment on the topic.
--SA