How to create Textbox with ellipse button

ahmed_one

Dear All, I am using Visual Studio 2010, C# and MySql. In one of my Winforms, there is a bound DataGridView which contains few textbox columns. I am looking for a solution to add an ellipse button in one of the Textbox column, upon clicking the ellipse button it will show a second form. I've no experience of creating any user controls, so upon searching on net, I found plenty of examples but due to the lack of knowledge I am unable to follow them. I am not looking for someone to spoon feed me, but some simple to advance tutorials/guidelines/sample will be highly appreciated. Thanks in advance Ahmed

BillWoodruff

CodeProject is your friend: [^].

“The best hope is that one of these days the Ground will get disgusted enough just to walk away ~ leaving people with nothing more to stand ON than what they have so bloody well stood FOR up to now.” Kenneth Patchen, Poet

Wayne Gaylard

I think he means ellipse button as in ... - not elliptical button :)

Everyone dies - but not everyone lives

BillWoodruff

Hi Wayne, I think you are right ! Unless I can come up with a composite Control with TextBox and Button with Alt-0133 justified right, I'm going to remove my post. thanks, Bill

“The best hope is that one of these days the Ground will get disgusted enough just to walk away ~ leaving people with nothing more to stand ON than what they have so bloody well stood FOR up to now.” Kenneth Patchen, Poet

ahmed_one

Wayne is right... I am talking about ellipse button like ...

Ravi Bhavnani

The easiest way (IMHO) is to simply create a user control that is a composite of a text box and the ellipses button. Be sure to anchor the controls such that the button is right aligned and never changes in size. /ravi

My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com

ahmed_one

Ravi thanks for your post, as mentioned in my post, I am not familier with custom controls programming. Need some guidance/tutorial/sample, anything get me started... Thanks

Ravi Bhavnani

See this[^] link. I believe there's a sample you can download. The actual task is quite simple: you create a User Control (Add New Item | User Control) which is essentially a canvas on which you can drag any number of controls (a la a Form). /ravi

My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com

Ravi Bhavnani

And here's a full-blown, juicy CP article: File Searcher Edit Control with Browse Button[^]. Crap - it's not .NET. My bad. :-O /ravi

My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com

ahmed_one

Ravi thanks for link with sample....I will try it...and let u guys posted....

BillWoodruff

A question I think you will need to answer here is whether or not a UserControl can be used in the DataGridView in a way that is satisfactory to you. Some years ago the DataGridView Program Manager at Microsoft wrote this:

"There is no recommended way to do this. The DataGridView only supports hosting a user control as an editing control when a cell is in edit mode. Regarding shared rows/cells. When a row becomes unshared the grid raises the RowUnshared event. To unshare a row, the grid calls the row's clone method which in turn clones all its cells.

For a databound grid, the cells to not get their values set since the cells do not store any data -- the underlying datasource stores the data. In the SetValue and GetValue code for a cell it checks to see if the cell/column/grid is databound and if so just retrieves or sets the value to the datasource. This is why you do not get a SetValue call with values as the grid is being displayed. The cell's GetValue method will be called as the grid is being displayed, so maybe you can use that?"

Another possibility ... which I am not sure will work ... is the idea of sub-classing a TextBox but putting a Label, or Button, inside it which you can wire-up to get the Click Event. Yes, you can create such a composite Component; I have done so, and used it successfully. But, the question is: will the DataGridView allow you to put such a sub-classed TextBox in one of its TextBox Columns ? If someone here with more experience with the DataGridView can answer the question if such a sub-classed Component can be used, I'll be happy to post an example.

“The best hope is that one of these days the Ground will get disgusted enough just to walk away ~ leaving people with nothing more to stand ON than what they have so bloody well stood FOR up to now.” Kenneth Patchen, Poet

Ravi Bhavnani

Also see this CP solution: How to place the UserControl(textbox + Button) inside the datagridview[^]. /ravi

My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com

BillWoodruff

Hi Ravi-ji, That example shows creating a UserControl; please see my last post on this thread which quotes the MS DataGridView Program Manager (several years ago) on using UserControls in the DataGridView. I'd appreciate your opinion on whether the ... to my mind ... limitations described there would rule out the kind of usage that Ahmed may want. Also appreciate your opinion on my hypothetical proposal to try and use a sub-classed TextBox (a Component) in a DataGridView TextBox Column. thanks, Bill

“The best hope is that one of these days the Ground will get disgusted enough just to walk away ~ leaving people with nothing more to stand ON than what they have so bloody well stood FOR up to now.” Kenneth Patchen, Poet

Ravi Bhavnani

And here[^] is a full solution at MSDN. /ravi

My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com

ahmed_one

Ravi thanks again for all links....and thanks BillWoodRuff I will appreciate if u can post the sample....

Ravi Bhavnani

Yeah, I also posted a link to the PM's post

BillWoodruff wrote:

hypothetical proposal to try and use a sub-classed TextBox (a Component) in a DataGridView TextBox Column.

I think it might be better to subclass a DataGridViewTextBoxColumn[^]. What do you think? /ravi

My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com

BillWoodruff

I have no idea if this is usable in a DataGridView in place of the TextBox normally used in a TextBox Column, but it was fun to write. Once you get a feeling for how easy it is to make new Controls (UserControls), or sub-class existing Controls (make Components), you can develop hybrids for special purposes very easily. The "craft" in it is getting the alignments and re-sizing right.

using System;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace March17_StateTracking
{
public partial class TBEllipse : TextBox
{
// necessary to define this in Component scope
// for MouseHover and MouseLeave EventHandlers
// to work properly
private readonly Label tLabel;

    // expose the Label for external use
    public Label TheLabel { set; get; }

    public TBEllipse()
    {
        InitializeComponent();

        tLabel = new Label();
        TheLabel = tLabel;

        tLabel.Text = "…";

        tLabel.FlatStyle = FlatStyle.Flat;
        tLabel.BorderStyle = BorderStyle.None;
        tLabel.BackColor = Color.Gainsboro;
        tLabel.TextAlign = ContentAlignment.TopRight;
        tLabel.Margin = new Padding(0, 0, 0, 0);
        tLabel.AutoSize = true;

        Controls.Add(tLabel);
        tLabel.Left = Width - tLabel.Width;
        tLabel.Show();
        tLabel.Anchor = AnchorStyles.Right | AnchorStyles.Top | AnchorStyles.Bottom;

        tLabel.MouseClick += tLabel\_MouseClick;
        tLabel.MouseHover += tLabel\_MouseHover;
    }

    public TBEllipse(IContainer container)
    {
        container.Add(this);

        InitializeComponent();
    }

    private void tLabel\_MouseClick(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
    {
        tLabel.BackColor = Color.Gainsboro;
    }

    private void tLabel\_MouseHover(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        tLabel.BackColor = Color.Lime;
    }
}

}

After creating an instance of this ... you can test it by drag-dropping it from the ToolBox to a Form after it is compiled ... you can subscribe to the Click Event of the Label. Here's an example of creating an instance in code and adding it to a Form's ControlCollection when a Button on the Form is clicked:

private void TestTBEllipse_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
TBEllipse testTBEllipse = new TBEllipse();
testTBEllips

Alan N

Why not just add a column of buttons next to the text column. The simplest and easiest way to do this would be to add an unbound DataGridViewButtonColumn to the DataGridView in the DataBindingComplete event and then handle the CellContentClick event to respond to button clicks. Sample event handlers for a DataGridView 'dgv' on a Form 'Form1'

int buttonColumnIndex; // to identify the button column in the CellContentClick handler

public Form1() {
InitializeComponent();
// add the event handlers
dgv.CellContentClick += new DataGridViewCellEventHandler(dgv_CellContentClick);
dgv.DataBindingComplete += new DataGridViewBindingCompleteEventHandler(dgv_DataBindingComplete);
}

private void dgv_DataBindingComplete(object sender, DataGridViewBindingCompleteEventArgs e) {
DataGridViewButtonColumn bc = new DataGridViewButtonColumn();
bc.Name = "ButtonColumn";
bc.HeaderText = "";
bc.UseColumnTextForButtonValue = true;
bc.Text = "Edit";
bc.AutoSizeMode = DataGridViewAutoSizeColumnMode.AllCells;
buttonColumnIndex = dgv.Columns.Add(bc);
// Column will be at the right, move to the required position
// e.g move to left
dgv.Columns[buttonColumnIndex].DisplayIndex = 0;
}

private void dgv_CellContentClick(object sender, DataGridViewCellEventArgs e) {
if (e.ColumnIndex == buttonColumnIndex) {
MessageBox.Show(String.Format("Edit button clicked on row {0}", e.RowIndex));
}
}

Alan...

ahmed_one

Thanks Alan, I am at present using button column. Actually this textbox with button idea is the inspiration from some popular Accounting softwares. They use in variety of there data entry forms, like for e.g Invoice, when user enter line item, there is column ProductID, when user enters ProductID column he/she can directly enter Product ID or use the ellipse button to show a lookup form. This looks cool, so I thought may be there are some ways we can do it in C# winforms, and by the look of all posts here I am now sure there are more then one ways. Thanks to all for helping me..I am trying to learn to create custom control, and if there is no success I will stick to button column approach.