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Tri-State TreeView Control

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2 Nov 2005CPL2 min read 395.5K   8.6K   73   91
A TreeView control with tri-state checkboxes.

Introduction

Microsoft provides a TreeView control in the .NET framework, but as usual it doesn't expose all the functionality that the underlying common control provides. It has the possibility to display check-boxes but they can't be tri-state check boxes.

This control adds tri-state check boxes and the necessary handling methods to check/uncheck all sub-items if the user clicks on a node, as well as displays a grey-checked check box for the parent if the siblings have differing check/uncheck states.

Background

A tri-state TreeView is a tree view control that displays check boxes next to the tree nodes. If you click on a check box, it checks (or unchecks) the check box and all sub-nodes.

If the nodes on the same level as the clicked node have differing check states the parent node's check box is grey-checked as well as its parent's and so on.

If you click on a grey-checked check box it unchecks that node and all its subnodes.

How to use the control

Add TriStateTreeView.cs to your project and then simply drop the TriStateTreeView control on a form and use it as a regular TreeView control. The only difference is when you want to access the checked state of a node. Instead of using the treeNode.Checked property you call triStateTreeView.GetChecked(treeNode) resp. triStateTreeView.SetChecked(treeNode, checkState). Instead of a bool these methods take a CheckState.

For example, the following code snippet checks the state of all the top level nodes:

C#
foreach (TreeNode node in m_treeView.Nodes)
{
  if (m_treeView.GetChecked(node) == 
         TriStateTreeView.CheckState.Checked)
    DoFoo(node);
}

How does it work?

The control derives from TreeView and sets the ImageList and SelectedImageList properties for the base control. It overrides the OnClick and OnKeyDown methods.

In the OnKeyDown method, we check if the pressed key is a space, and if it is we change the state of the selected node.

The OnClick method is a little trickier. We have to use the TVM_HITTEST Win32 API message to determine if the user clicked on the icon or on the item. If the user clicked on the icon we change the state of the selected node.

Limitations

This control doesn't support displaying both check boxes and icons. If you need this functionality you have to call additional Win32 API methods. The common control tree view control supports having multiple image lists, but this functionality isn't exposed in .NET.

Remarks

The control makes use of the Skybound.VisualStyle assembly from www.skybound.ca. By commenting out the lines that reference that assembly it will easily work without it. Another way of making the control aware of visual styles is described here.

The demo project consists of an assembly that contains the TriStateTreeView, a demo project and a NUnit test assembly with some tests for the control.

History

  • 26 March 2004 - First version.
  • 28 October 2005 - Added support for visual styles and Before/AfterCheck.

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Common Public License Version 1.0 (CPL)


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Comments and Discussions

 
QuestionHow to use this dll in 64 bit mechines Pin
Member 329057315-Sep-10 16:18
Member 329057315-Sep-10 16:18 
Hi,

I tried this dll with my application and application can use this dll in my local mechine(WIndows XP).Then i had deployed the application on 64 bit windows server i got the error message application has stopped working.

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: CLR20r3
Problem Signature 01: tristate.exe
Problem Signature 02: 1.0.0.0
Problem Signature 03: 4c917bd9
Problem Signature 04: tristate
Problem Signature 05: 1.0.0.0
Problem Signature 06: 4c917bd9
Problem Signature 07: 9
Problem Signature 08: 11
Problem Signature 09: System.BadImageFormatException
OS Version: 6.0.6002.2.2.0.274.10
Locale ID: 1033

Can you please advice how i can solve this issue

Regards,
Sajesh
AnswerRe: How to use this dll in 64 bit mechines Pin
Cody Tang7-Oct-10 23:30
professionalCody Tang7-Oct-10 23:30 
GeneralRe: How to use this dll in 64 bit mechines Pin
Member 223057026-Dec-10 12:11
Member 223057026-Dec-10 12:11 
GeneralRe: How to use this dll in 64 bit mechines Pin
Cody Tang30-Jul-11 21:49
professionalCody Tang30-Jul-11 21:49 
GeneralRe: How to use this dll in 64 bit mechines Pin
pman30-Jul-11 1:01
pman30-Jul-11 1:01 

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