Suppose you want to bind a collection of your custom objects to a DataGridView in a WinForm, and you want it to be sortable without having to write a lot of code. Once again, using Marc Brooks' DynamicComparer this becomes an easy task. Especially when you combine it with the BindingList class (which is a default implementation of the IBindingList interface):
public class SortableBindingList<T> : BindingList<T>
{
private List<T> _sortableList;
public SortableBindingList(List<T> list)
: base(list)
{
_sortableList = list;
}
protected override bool SupportsSortingCore
{
get { return true; }
}
protected override void ApplySortCore(PropertyDescriptor property,
ListSortDirection direction)
{
string sortExpression = property.Name;
if (direction == ListSortDirection.Descending)
{
sortExpression = sortExpression + " DESC";
}
DynamicComparer<T> comparer =
new DynamicComparer<T>(sortExpression);
_sortableList.Sort(comparer.Comparer);
}
protected override void RemoveSortCore() {}
}
Binding a sortable list to a DataGridView is now as easy as this:
dataGridView.DataSource = new SortableBindingList<Order>(OrderService.GetAllOrders());
Obviously, the sorting capabilities are pretty basic... only one column at a time, sorting can't be removed, etc... For a lot of scenario's though, this could already be sufficient