Hyperlinked file array list in windows form application

Thank you so much Niki!  That was exactly what I was trying to do.  Now I can add the rest of my controls.

Jose

Thanks Sam.  Would you be able to provide a working sample of the Datatable rendered into the DatagridView?  My application basically is listing existing files from a folder, and also has a filewatcher to list new files.  I'd like to get this working in the DataGridview as you suggested. Here's my code thus far:

using System;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Collections;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Data;
using System.Configuration;
using System.IO;

namespace DirectoryMonitorWinForm
{
    ///

    /// Summary description for DirectoryMonitor.
    ///

    public class DirectoryMonitorForm : System.Windows.Forms.Form
    {
            // The path where the FileMonitor will watch for files...
            private static string Path = @"C:\test";
        private static string Filter="*.txt";
        private static bool IncludeSubs=false;
            private System.IO.FileSystemWatcher FileMonitor;
            private RichTextBox richTextBox2;
            private RichTextBox richTextBox1;
            private DataGridView dataGridView1;
       
       
        ///

        /// Required designer variable.
        ///

        private System.ComponentModel.Container components = null;

        public DirectoryMonitorForm()
        {
            // Required for Windows Form Designer support
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        ///

        ///    Clean up any resources being used.
        ///

        protected override void Dispose( bool disposing )
        {
            if( disposing )
            {
                if (components != null)
                {
                    components.Dispose();
                }
            }
            base.Dispose( disposing );
        }

        Windows Form Designer generated code
   
        ///

        /// The main entry point for the application.
        ///

        [STAThread]
        static void Main()
        {
            Application.Run(new DirectoryMonitorForm());
        }
      
        public void FileMonitor_Changed(object sender, System.IO.FileSystemEventArgs e)
        {
            string ChangeType = e.ChangeType.ToString();
            FileMonitor.Path = Path.ToString();

            //display a message box for the appropriate changetype.
            if (ChangeType=="Created")
            {
                // This adds the "file://" to the file to make it appear as a link
                richTextBox2.AppendText("file:/" + "/" + FileMonitor.Path + e.Name);
        }

        public void DirMon_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
        {
            FileMonitor.Path = Path.ToString();
            FileMonitor.Filter = Filter.ToString();
            FileMonitor.IncludeSubdirectories = IncludeSubs;
            FileMonitor.NotifyFilter = NotifyFilters.LastAccess | NotifyFilters.LastWrite
                | NotifyFilters.FileName | NotifyFilters.DirectoryName;
          
            //Begin monitoring.
            FileMonitor.EnableRaisingEvents = true;

            //Get the list of existing files from the folder and list in the textbox
            System.IO.DirectoryInfo di = new System.IO.DirectoryInfo(@"C:\test");
            //to retrieve *.TXT files alone
            System.IO.FileInfo[] rgFiles = di.GetFiles("*.txt");

            richTextBox2.AppendText("***Contents of Folder***" + "\r\n");
            foreach (System.IO.FileInfo fi in rgFiles)
            {
                string filePath = fi.Name;
                string line;

                if (File.Exists(filePath))
                {
                    StreamReader file = null;
                    try
                    {
                        file = new StreamReader(filePath);
                        while ((line = file.ReadLine()) != null)
                        {
                            richTextBox2.AppendText(line + "\r\n");
                        }
                    }
                    finally
                    {
                        if (file != null)
                            file.Close();
                    }
                }
                richTextBox2.AppendText(fi.Name + "\r\n");
            }
        }

Assuming you already have a DataTable with the data you want to show, then you can set a DataGridView's DataSource Property to the DataTable and the data for the DataGridView will be filled in by automatically. Just add a DataGridView to the form. If you want all fields of the DataTable to be shown as columns in the DataGridView in the order they appear in the DataTable then you don't want to specify the columns at design time. The default for the AutoGenerateColumns Property is true so you can leave that as-is. If you need to specify columns in the DataGridView that are not all the fields in the DataTable then you will need to create the columns yourself. If the data in the DataTable changes, then you probably will need to create a new DataTable and fill it with the new data and change the DataGridView's DataSource Property to the new DataTable.

When you have all that working, look at the documentation of the DataGridView.CellClick Event. Do you know how to add event handlers for forms? Add a handler for th DataGridView.CellClick Event and note that the example in the DataGridView.CellClick documentation shows how to determine what row and column that the click event occured for. Let us know if you need help with that.

Do you need to show the data as a table with columns or a list of links or do you need to show free-format data in the manner of a document with text and the links in various positions within the text? If you need a table, then a RTF box is probably not the best solution. You could use a DataGridView or a Listbox or possibly other choices. In a DataGridView you could use the CellClick Event to do the equivalent of a hyperlink click. There are many other possibilities. If you want to change the cell foreground color and/or the mouse cursor when the mouse hovers over a cell, you might be able to use the CellEnter and CellLeave events.

I am not sure how to use a RTF box to do what you are describing, but it probably is possible. Another possibility is to use HTML in a WebBrowser control instead of a RTF control.