Adding databing to a datagrid? - wpf

Question

I have a simple datastructure following:
In the model I have
public class Receipt
{
public int Id { get; set; }
public double Price { get; set; }
public string Store { get; set; }
public DateTime Date { get; set; }
}
I've made two of these objects and I am trying to bind them to a datagrid. I've filled in the properties of the two receipts and added them to the dataGridRows but they don't show up in my DataGrid.
public MainWindow()
{
InitializeComponent();
makeReceipts()
}
public ObservableCollection<Receipt> dataGridRows = new ObservableCollection<Receipt>();
public Receipt receipt1 = new Receipt();
public Receipt receipt2 = new Receipt();
public void makeReceipts()
{
receipt1.Id = 1;
receipt1.Price = 10;
receipt1.Store = "Brugsen";
receipt1.Date = DateTime.Today;
receipt2.Id = 2;
receipt2.Price = 15;
receipt2.Store = "Netto";
receipt2.Date = DateTime.Today;
dataGridRows.Add(receipt1);
dataGridRows.Add(receipt2);
}
And in the xaml of the MainWindow where I want my datagrid to display the receipts I have:
<DataGrid Name="ReceiptGrid" CanUserResizeColumns="True" IsReadOnly="True" AutoGenerateColumns="True" ItemsSource="{Binding Source=dataGridRows}" />
What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

first you can just bind to public properties.
so if you want to use binding you have at least do:
public ObservableCollection<Receipt> dataGridRows {get;set;}
second you have to do two steps:
set the right datacontext
set the right binding expression(Path)
assume that the datacontext for yyour grid is an object with the property dataGridRows, your binding should look like this
<DataGrid ItemsSource="{Binding Path=dataGridRows}" .../>

Answer 2

Think your problem is you have to write
ItemsSource="{Binding Path=dataGridRows}"
and not
ItemsSource="{Binding Source=dataGridRows}"
source is to specify another control in xaml file

Answer 3

First of all you can bind only public properites so you need to change definition of dataGridRows to something like this:
public ObservableCollection<Receipt> dataGridRows { get; set; }
then you don't bind it as a Source but as a Path, however since your dataGridRows is defined in MainWindow you need to specify Source as your MainWindow otherwise it will look in default DataContext which is not set in your case
<DataGrid ... ItemsSource="{Binding RelativeSource={RelativeSource AncestorType={x:Type Window}}, Path=dataGridRows}" />
this tells Binding to find Window and look for a dataGridRows property there.EDIT:Normally you don't put data into view. I suggest you read more about MVVM design pattern but basically the idea is that you have your ViewModel where you put in you whole application logic, unaware of interface, and then on top you have your view to interact with user but in ViewModel you don't operate on controls.What you should do is create your view-model class with dataGridRows property and assign it through DataContext of Window for example. Each FrameworkElement has it and when you don't specify Binging source (Source, RelativeSource, ElementName) it will try to resolve Binding.Path in current DataContext. If current control does not have it specified then if will go to parent in visual tree and so on.