Bind a Silverlight DataGrid to a given XML data source

Bechir Bejaoui

Bind Silverlight DataGrid XML data source Bejaoui

18 Comments

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Muhammad Ovais14y ago
Great job
Maria Johnson14y ago
Its a nice and useful article for those who wants to learn things in Silverlight.
Maria Johnson14y agoedited
Thanks for sharing.
Jimmy Underwood14y ago
Thanks
Vineet Kumar Saini14y ago
Good article...
Arjun Panwar14y ago
Thanks for sharing
Jonathan Burchel15y ago
Does this approach work to support TwoWay binding back to the source? If not, can that be supported?
Sergei Dumnov15y ago
This is one of good features of the Adobe Flex controls not only the grid. Did you try to experiment this way with the SL controls? Thanks, Sergei.
Ian Holmes16y ago
I have same question as scott. The data I have coming back in XML is unknow (interms of columns) so can't be mapped to a predefined class I am using Silverlight V4 Cheers Ian
Scott Neufeld16y ago
Is it possible to bind XML directly to the control without using a nominal class? I've seen a technique that uses a ValueConverter, but it just seems strange to me that I need to build a class and create an array of those classes based on iterating through the XML. I also know you can't use an anonymous class in Silverlight. What if I don't know the columns coming back and need to build my DataGrid dynamically?
- Bechir Bejaoui16y ago
  Hi, Could you precise the Silverlight version that you are using ?
Srividhya Gopalakrishnan17y ago
Thanks a lot.. Nice Article. Article is clear and explanatory.
- Bechir Bejaoui17y ago
  Not at all my freind you're welcome
Mahesh Chand17y ago
Good work Bechir. Cheers!
- Bechir Bejaoui17y ago
  Thank you Mahesh!
- LakshmiNarayan R17y ago
  Thank you very much. Very good article.
- dg man16y ago
  it's a good tutorial. However, how would you do this if you were dealing with multiple descendants in the same XML?

Bind a given DataGrid data source to a given XML file

DataGrid could also be bound to a another persisted kind of datasoures, such as XML ressources or something spectial such as RSS feeds. To bind a given DataGrid to a given xml file data source, the following example is provided to illustrate that.

Create a new Silverlight application

Figure 1

First, In the XAML code editor add the following code

<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
<data:DataGrid x:Name="myDataGrid"
AutoGenerateColumns="True"
>
</data:DataGrid>
</Grid>

As you can remark, the DataGrid should be named so that it could be refered later in the C# code behind. Now, let consider this xml file as a main data source for our DataGrid.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<myFamily>
<item>
<FirstName>Bejaoui</FirstName>
<LastName>Habib</LastName>
<Age>66</Age>
<IsMale>true</IsMale>
</item>
<item>
<FirstName>Ben Garga</FirstName>
<LastName>Kadija</LastName>
<Age>63</Age>
<IsMale>false</IsMale>
</item>

<item>
<FirstName>Bejaoui</FirstName>
<LastName>Bechir</LastName>
<Age>30</Age>
<IsMale>true</IsMale>
</item>
<item>
<FirstName>Bejaoui</FirstName>
<LastName>Arbia</LastName>
<Age>25</Age>
<IsMale>false</IsMale>
</item>
<item>
<FirstName>Bejaoui</FirstName>
<LastName>Rim</LastName>
<Age>20</Age>
<IsMale>false</IsMale>
</item>
</myFamily>

Second, a class that fits the xml structure should be developed. It could be represented as under

public class Person
{
public string FirstName { get; set; }
public string LastName { get; set; }
public string Age { get; set; }
public string IsMale { get; set; }
}

Third, a reference to the System.Xml.Linq namespace should be added

Figure 2

In the code behind, a DataGrid object should be declared and the under code should be implemented

public partial class Page : UserControl
{
DataGrid oGrid;
public Page()
{
InitializeComponent();
InitializeGrid();
}
public void InitializeGrid()
{
XDocument oDoc = XDocument.Load("File.xml");
var myData = from info in oDoc.Descendants("item")
select new Person
{
FirstName = Convert.ToString(info.Element("FirstName").Value),
LastName = Convert.ToString(info.Element("LastName").Value),
Age = Convert.ToString(info.Element("Age").Value),
IsMale = Convert.ToString(info.Element("IsMale").Value)
};
oGrid = this.FindName("myDataGrid") as DataGrid;
oGrid.ItemsSource = myData;

}
}

This leads to the following result

Figure 3