When we want to display/edit date values in DataGrid, we could add a templatecolumn add a TextBlock to the CellTemplate and DatePicker to CellEditingTemplate. but that gets repetitive, if we are doing the same in multiple places
we can create this custom column by inheriting from DataGridBoundColumn and overriding few methods
Here is the minimal code to create a DataGridDateColumn
public class DataGridDateColumn : DataGridBoundColumn
{
public string DateFormat { get; set; }
protected override void CancelCellEdit(FrameworkElement editingElement, object uneditedValue)
{
DatePicker dp = editingElement as DatePicker;
if (dp != null)
{
dp.SelectedDate = DateTime.Parse(uneditedValue.ToString());
}
}
protected override FrameworkElement GenerateEditingElement(DataGridCell cell, object dataItem)
{
DatePicker dp = new DatePicker();
Binding b = new Binding();
b.Path = this.Binding.Path;
b.Source = this.Binding.Source;
if (DateFormat != null)
{
DateTimeConverter dtc = new DateTimeConverter();
b.Converter = dtc;
b.ConverterParameter = DateFormat;
}
dp.SetBinding(DatePicker.SelectedDateProperty, this.Binding);
return dp;
}
protected override FrameworkElement GenerateElement(DataGridCell cell, object dataItem)
{
TextBlock txt = new TextBlock();
Binding b = new Binding();
b.Path = this.Binding.Path;
b.Source = this.Binding.Source;
if (DateFormat != null)
{
DateTimeConverter dtc = new DateTimeConverter();
b.Converter = dtc;
b.ConverterParameter = DateFormat;
}
txt.SetBinding(TextBlock.TextProperty, b);
return txt;
}
protected override object PrepareCellForEdit(FrameworkElement editingElement, RoutedEventArgs editingEventArgs)
{
DatePicker dp = editingElement as DatePicker;
if (dp != null)
{
DateTime? dt = dp.SelectedDate;
if (dt.HasValue)
return dt.Value;
}
return DateTime.Today ;
}
}
This is a converter, in case we want to format the date value
public class DateTimeConverter : IValueConverter
{
public object Convert(object value,
Type targetType,
object parameter,
CultureInfo culture)
{
DateTime date = (DateTime)value;
return date.ToString(parameter.ToString());
}
public object ConvertBack(object value,
Type targetType,
object parameter,
CultureInfo culture)
{
string strValue = value.ToString();
DateTime resultDateTime;
if (DateTime.TryParse(strValue, out resultDateTime))
{
return resultDateTime;
}
return value;
}
}
Once we have these classes and namespace decleration(in my ex. it is mapped to local)
we can just say
<local : DataGridDateColumn DateFormat=”yyyy-MM-dd” Binding=”{Binding HireDate}”/>
