I recall having issues finding something that would work when I added sorting to my datagrids too. You can implement a sortable bindable list by first adding the following class to your project. It is a list implementation that implements BindingList<T>
, so that you can bind your datagrid to it, and it also supports sorting. A better explanation of the details than I could give is on MSDN here
public class SortableBindingList<T> : BindingList<T>
{
private ArrayList sortedList;
private ArrayList unsortedItems;
private bool isSortedValue;
public SortableBindingList()
{
}
public SortableBindingList(IList<T> list)
{
foreach (object o in list)
{
this.Add((T)o);
}
}
protected override bool SupportsSearchingCore
{
get
{
return true;
}
}
protected override int FindCore(PropertyDescriptor prop, object key)
{
PropertyInfo propInfo = typeof(T).GetProperty(prop.Name);
T item;
if (key != null)
{
for (int i = 0; i < Count; ++i)
{
item = (T)Items[i];
if (propInfo.GetValue(item, null).Equals(key))
return i;
}
}
return -1;
}
public int Find(string property, object key)
{
PropertyDescriptorCollection properties =
TypeDescriptor.GetProperties(typeof(T));
PropertyDescriptor prop = properties.Find(property, true);
if (prop == null)
return -1;
else
return FindCore(prop, key);
}
protected override bool SupportsSortingCore
{
get { return true; }
}
protected override bool IsSortedCore
{
get { return isSortedValue; }
}
ListSortDirection sortDirectionValue;
PropertyDescriptor sortPropertyValue;
protected override void ApplySortCore(PropertyDescriptor prop,
ListSortDirection direction)
{
sortedList = new ArrayList();
Type interfaceType = prop.PropertyType.GetInterface("IComparable");
if (interfaceType == null && prop.PropertyType.IsValueType)
{
Type underlyingType = Nullable.GetUnderlyingType(prop.PropertyType);
if (underlyingType != null)
{
interfaceType = underlyingType.GetInterface("IComparable");
}
}
if (interfaceType != null)
{
sortPropertyValue = prop;
sortDirectionValue = direction;
IEnumerable<T> query = base.Items;
if (direction == ListSortDirection.Ascending)
{
query = query.OrderBy(i => prop.GetValue(i));
}
else
{
query = query.OrderByDescending(i => prop.GetValue(i));
}
int newIndex = 0;
foreach (object item in query)
{
this.Items[newIndex] = (T)item;
newIndex++;
}
isSortedValue = true;
this.OnListChanged(new ListChangedEventArgs(ListChangedType.Reset, -1));
}
else
{
throw new NotSupportedException("Cannot sort by " + prop.Name +
". This" + prop.PropertyType.ToString() +
" does not implement IComparable");
}
}
protected override void RemoveSortCore()
{
int position;
object temp;
if (unsortedItems != null)
{
for (int i = 0; i < unsortedItems.Count; )
{
position = this.Find("LastName",
unsortedItems[i].GetType().
GetProperty("LastName").GetValue(unsortedItems[i], null));
if (position > 0 && position != i)
{
temp = this[i];
this[i] = this[position];
this[position] = (T)temp;
i++;
}
else if (position == i)
i++;
else
unsortedItems.RemoveAt(i);
}
isSortedValue = false;
OnListChanged(new ListChangedEventArgs(ListChangedType.Reset, -1));
}
}
public void RemoveSort()
{
RemoveSortCore();
}
protected override PropertyDescriptor SortPropertyCore
{
get { return sortPropertyValue; }
}
protected override ListSortDirection SortDirectionCore
{
get { return sortDirectionValue; }
}
}
With that in place, the only changes you need to make to the code that you have posted above is to create a SortableBindingList based on your list and bind to the sortable list, rather than the standard one, like so:
List<MyClass> list = new List<MyClass>();
list.Add(new MyClass("Peter", 1202));
list.Add(new MyClass("James", 292));
list.Add(new MyClass("Bond", 23));
// Added sortable list...
SortableBindingList<MyClass> sortableList = new SortableBindingList<MyClass>(list);
BindingSource bs = new BindingSource();
bs.DataSource = sortableList; // Bind to the sortable list
And that will be enough to get you going.