Bind a control to a single value in a collection/array in WPF

Question

In WPF I have a collection of bool? values and I want to bind each of these to a separate checkbox programmatically. I want the bindings to be TwoWay so that changing the value of the individual item in the collection in code updates the check box and vice versa.

I have spent ages trying to figure out how to do this and I am completely stuck. With the following code the checkbox only gets the right value when the window is loaded and that's it. Changing the check box doesn't even update the value in the collection. (UPDATE: this appears to be a bug in .NET4 as the collection does get updated in an identical .NET3.5 project. UPDATE: Microsoft have confirmed the bug and that it will be fixed in the .NET4 release.)

Many thanks in advance for your help!

C#:

namespace MyNamespace
{
    public partial class MyWindow : Window, INotifyPropertyChanged
    {
        public MyWindow()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            DataContext = this;
        }

        public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;
        protected void OnPropertyChanged(string propertyName)
        {
            if (PropertyChanged != null)
            {
               PropertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(propertyName));
            }

        public List<bool?> myCollection = new List<bool?>
            { true, false, true, false, true, false };

        public List<bool?> MyCollection
        {
            get { return myCollection; }
            set { myCollection = value; }
        }
    }
}

XAML:

<CheckBox IsChecked="{Binding Path=MyCollection[0], Mode=TwoWay}">

Answer 1

There are a few things that need changing here to get this to work. Firstly you'll need to wrap your boolean value in an object that implements the INotifyPropertyChanged interface in order to get the change notification that you are looking for. Currently you are binding to boolean values in your collection which do not implement the interface. To do this you could create a wrapper class like so :

  public class Wrapper: INotifyPropertyChanged
    {
        public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;
        protected void OnPropertyChanged(string propertyName)
        {
            if (PropertyChanged != null)
            {
                PropertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(propertyName));
            }
        }

        private bool val = false;

        public bool Val
        {
            get { return val; }
            set
            {
                val = value;
                this.OnPropertyChanged("Val");
            }
        }

        public Wrapper(bool val)
        {
            this.val = val;
        }

    }

You'll then want to create these objects in your form instead of a list of booleans. You may also want to use an observable collection instead of a list so that notification of items being added and removed are sent. This is shown below:

public Window1()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
        this.DataContext = this;
    }

    private ObservableCollection<Wrapper> myCollection = new ObservableCollection<Wrapper>()
        {new Wrapper(true), new Wrapper(false), new Wrapper(true)};


    public ObservableCollection<Wrapper> MyCollection
    {
        get { return myCollection; }
    }

The next thing to do is to display a list of check boxes in your ui. To do this WPF provides itemscontrols. ListBox is an itemscontrol so we can use this as a starting point. Set the itemssource of a listbox to be MyCollection. We then need to define how each Wrapper object is going to be displayed in the list box and this can be done with a datatemplate which is created in the windows resources. This is shown below :

<Window.Resources>
    <DataTemplate x:Key="myCollectionItems">
        <CheckBox IsChecked="{Binding Path=Val, Mode=TwoWay}"></CheckBox>
    </DataTemplate>
</Window.Resources>
<Grid>
    <ListBox ItemsSource="{Binding Path=MyCollection}" ItemTemplate="{StaticResource myCollectionItems}"></ListBox>
</Grid>

This should get you up and running with a simple demo of checkboxes that have values bound to a list of booleans.

Answer 2

What makes you think it's not working? It's working for me :)

Here's my test XAML:

<UniformGrid>
    <CheckBox IsChecked="{Binding Path=MyCollection[0], Mode=TwoWay}"/>
    <ListBox ItemsSource="{Binding MyCollection}"/>
    <Button Content="Test" Click="Button_Click"/>
</UniformGrid>

Here's my code behind:

private void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{

}

(the rest is the same as yours)

I placed a breakpoint on Button_Click and checked MyCollection[0] it was updated according to the IsChecked value of the CheckBox.

Try changing your collection type from List<bool?> to ObservableCollection<bool?> perhaps that is the reason you think it's not working for you (the fact that changes to the collection are not reflected anywhere else in your view).

Answer 3

Change your List<bool?> to an ObservableCollection<bool?>. A List does not raise the change notifications that WPF needs to update the UI. An ObservableCollection does. This handles the case where the list entry is changed and the CheckBox needs to update accordingly.

In the other direction, it works for me even with a List<bool?> -- i.e. toggling the checkbox modifies the value in the collection. Your binding syntax is certainly correct.