how to style Grid ColumnDefinitions in WPF

Asked 2011-03-03T01:30:51.577

I want to know how can I style a Grid so that I don't need to specify the

<Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
   <ColumnDefinition Width="auto" SharedSizeGroup="SG1"/>
   <ColumnDefinition Width="auto" SharedSizeGroup="SG2"/>
</Grid.ColumnDefinitions>

every time?

Thank you very much!

ps: I did try to search on Google first. But I couldn't find any answer. Anyone who find the answer from google could you please tell me what keyword do you use to search? Sometimes I find it hard to determine what keyword use to search.

ps2: I am too lazy, every I just open chrome and type something and search. If nothing found, I conclude nothing found and come here. Is there anyone will search on Google, then find nothing, then open bing.com and search? And find nothing and go to yahoo and search and search?.....

wpf grid

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2 Answers

It was always a pet peeve of mine to have to write out the RowDefinitions and ColumnDefinitions, so one day I got tired of it and wrote some attached properties that can be used for this kind of thing.

Now instead of writing my Grid definition like this:

<Grid>
    <Grid.RowDefinitions>
        <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />
        <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />
        <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />
        <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />
        <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />
        <RowDefinition Height="*" />
    </Grid.RowDefinitions>
    <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
        <ColumnDefinition Width="Auto" />
        <ColumnDefinition Width="*" />
        <ColumnDefinition Width="Auto" />
        <ColumnDefinition Width="*" />
    </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
</Grid>

I can use

<Grid local:GridHelpers.RowCount="6"
      local:GridHelpers.StarRows="5"
      local:GridHelpers.ColumnCount="4"
      local:GridHelpers.StarColumns="1,3">

</Grid>

It only allows for Auto and * sizes, but most of the time that's all I'm using.

It also supports bindings for dynamically sized Grids

<Grid local:GridHelpers.RowCount="{Binding RowCount}"
      local:GridHelpers.ColumnCount="{Binding ColumnCount}" />

Here's a copy of the code in case that site ever goes down :

public class GridHelpers
{
    #region RowCount Property

    /// <summary>
    /// Adds the specified number of Rows to RowDefinitions. 
    /// Default Height is Auto
    /// </summary>
    public static readonly DependencyProperty RowCountProperty =
        DependencyProperty.R


                        
                        
                            answered 2012-06-28T13:04:11.383


            
            
                
                    
                        
                            
                            
                        
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                        I believe it's not possible because you can't set a style that affects all ColumnDefinition(s).

Grid does not support ControlTemplate, so you can't do it with composition.

The only hack I can think of would be to create a user control with those 2 columns and extend the grid. But that's nasty.

                        
                        
                            answered 2011-03-03T04:34:44.613



        
        
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