A cell is a ContentControl, which displays the value of a corresponding property in a data item. Like their parent row, cells have a limited lifespan and will only exist while their parent rows are displayed in a grid's viewport (virtualization). Each cell is also associated with a parent column, whose FieldName property matches the FieldName property of its child cells.

The DataCell and ColumnManagerCell classes both derive from the Cell class (see Other Classes).

Editing and Validating

The content of a cell—assuming that it is not read-only—can be edited at runtime by the end user through the use of cell editors. Cell editors are created from DataTemplates (see Templates) and are used to edit the content of cells. Custom cell editors can be provided per column by setting a column's CellEditor property, or per data type through the DataGridControl's DefaultCellEditors property (see Cell Editors). A cell's IsCellEditorDisplayed property can be consulted to know if its editor is displayed.

Programmatically, the content of a cell can be edited when the parent row's or the cell's BeginEdit method is called, committed by the EndEdit method, and the modification canceled by the CancelEdit method.  At any time, the IsBeingEdited property can be consulted to determine if a cell's content is being edited, while the IsDirty property can be consulted to see if a cell's content has been modified. The Cell and Row classes also expose routed events (see Table 1 in Edit Events) that are triggered during various stages of the edit process and that can be handled by any parent element in the visual tree (bubbling).

When the value of a cell fails the validation process, its HasValidationError property will return true and its ValidationError property will contain a CellValidationError, which provides information on the cell in error, the error content, the exception (if one was thrown), and the validation rule that failed.  If the validation rule that failed is a binding-level ValidationRule, it will be wrapped in a PassthroughCellValidationRule. Validation errors will also be reported by a row when the value of one or more of its cells fails the validation process. Like cells, when a row contains validation errors, its HasValidationError property will return true and its ValidationError property will contain a RowValidationError, which provides information on the row in error, the error content, the exception, and the validation rule that failed.

For more information on editing a validating data, refer to the Editing Data and Validating Data topics.

Appearance

Styles are a collection of properties and their associated values which are applied to an element to override the default appearance provided by the element's default style (see also Templates). All elements in a grid, with the exception of columns, can be styled in the same way as elements provided by the Microsoft .NET Framework.

Cells also offer the possibility of changing the background and foreground brushes that are used when a cell is current without changing a cell's template through the CurrentBackground and the CurrentForeground properties (see also Styles). To retrieve the current cell, the IsCurrent property can be consulted. 

The width of a cell's parent column can be set to the fitted width of a cell by assigning the value returned by a cell's GetFittedWidth method to its Width property. To retrieve the fitted width of all the cells in a column, the column's GetFittedWidth method can be used.

For more information on styles and templates, refer to the Styles and Templates topics.

 

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