ListView

A ListView displays data. By default it contains a GridView. It can display data in different ways—it is a container for other controls like GridView.

ListView is really a container for other controls. This example is mostly about using GridView—but that too is useful.

This example uses a GridView with 3 GridViewColumns nested within it. A Name (AnimalList) is defined on the ListView element. On each GridViewColumn, we specify a DisplayMemberBinding.

<Window x:Class="WpfApplication2.MainWindow"
        xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
        xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
        Title="ListView" Height="350" Width="525"
        Loaded="Window_Loaded">
    <Grid>
        <ListView HorizontalAlignment="Left"
                  Height="299" Margin="10,10,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="497"
                  Name="AnimalList">
            <ListView.View>
                <GridView>
                    <GridViewColumn Header="Name"
                                    DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding Name}"
                                    Width="100"/>
                    <GridViewColumn Header="ID"
                                    DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding ID}"
                                    Width="100"/>
                    <GridViewColumn Header="Size"
                                    DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding Size}"
                                    Width="100"/>
                </GridView>
            </ListView.View>
        </ListView>
    </Grid>
</Window>
using System.Windows;

class Animal
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string ID { get; set; }
    public int Size { get; set; }
}

namespace WpfApplication2
{
    public partial class MainWindow : Window
    {
        public MainWindow()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        private void Window_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            AnimalList.Items.Add(new Animal() { Name = "Cat", ID = "123A", Size = 100 });
            AnimalList.Items.Add(new Animal() { Name = "Dog", ID = "456X", Size = 200 });
            AnimalList.Items.Add(new Animal() { Name = "Rabbit", ID = "333E", Size = 40 });
        }
    }
}

Some notes

In the Window_Loaded event, we access the AnimalList by its name. We add Animal objects to its Items collection with the Add method.

DisplayMemberBinding

When creating this example, the most confusing part was using the DisplayMemberBinding. The curly brackets within the attribute are required: these are part of the XAML.

A ListView is largely a container for other controls. For most programs, consider instead a DataGrid or a GridView without a ListView.