When Clearing an ObservableCollection, There are No Items in e.OldItems

Question

I have something here that is really catching me off guard.

I have an ObservableCollection of T that is filled with items. I also have an event handler attached to t

Answer 1

I found another "simple" solution deriving from ObservableCollection, but it is not very elegant because it uses Reflection... If you like it here is my solution:

public class ObservableCollectionClearable : ObservableCollection
{
    private T[] ClearingItems = null;

    protected override void OnCollectionChanged(System.Collections.Specialized.NotifyCollectionChangedEventArgs e)
    {
        switch (e.Action)
        {
            case System.Collections.Specialized.NotifyCollectionChangedAction.Reset:
                if (this.ClearingItems != null)
                {
                    ReplaceOldItems(e, this.ClearingItems);
                    this.ClearingItems = null;
                }
                break;
        }
        base.OnCollectionChanged(e);
    }

    protected override void ClearItems()
    {
        this.ClearingItems = this.ToArray();
        base.ClearItems();
    }

    private static void ReplaceOldItems(System.Collections.Specialized.NotifyCollectionChangedEventArgs e, T[] olditems)
    {
        Type t = e.GetType();
        System.Reflection.FieldInfo foldItems = t.GetField("_oldItems", System.Reflection.BindingFlags.NonPublic | System.Reflection.BindingFlags.Instance);
        if (foldItems != null)
        {
            foldItems.SetValue(e, olditems);
        }
    }
}

Here I save the current elements in an array field in the ClearItems method, then I intercept the call of OnCollectionChanged and overwrite the e._oldItems private field (through Reflections) before launching base.OnCollectionChanged