Hide properties in BindingList
I was recently working on a project that needed a custom list of objects bound to a DataGridView. I found the BindingList but soon realized that it bound all of my public properties to the DataGridView. This was not the outcome I was looking for so I started doing a lot of research. I couldn’t find any specific information relating to hiding properties.
Browsable Attribute
I started looking at the Browsable attribute found in System.ComponentModel. The attribute is used to hide properties from a properties grid control but doesn’t make any mention of working with BindingList. I ran a few tests and found that if I mark my properties with the Browsable attribute it would in fact alter my DataGridView.
By default, all of the public properties are browsable so I only need to mark the properties I don’t want visible. Here is a sample hidden property:
[Browsable(false)] public string MyProperty { get{return _myProperty;} set{_myProperty = value;} }
Using this example, I added this attribute to each property I did not want displayed in the DataGridView. I could have manipulated the DataGridView when I performed the DataBinding but that would have limited me to modifying that code every time I might add or remove a property. This solution allows me to control the viewable properties from my class.
In my next post I will show how to set the column order for your properties using attributes and a little code when data binding.
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