Best way to databind a group of radiobuttons in WinForms

Question

I\'m currently working on databinding some of my existing Windows Forms, and I\'ve ran into an issue figuring out the proper way of databinding a group of radiobutton contro

Answer 1

This is my approach for binding a list of radio buttons to an enum.

Using the Enum as a string in the button's Tag property, I use the Binding.Format and Binding.Parse event to decide which button should be checked.

public enum OptionEnum
{
   Option1 = 0,
   Option2
}

OptionEnum _rbEnum = OptionEnum.Option1;
OptionEnum PropertyRBEnum
{
    get { return _rbEnum; }
    set
    {
        _rbEnum = value;
        RaisePropertyChanged("PropertyRBEnum");
    }
}

public static void FormatSelectedEnum(object sender, ConvertEventArgs args) where T : struct
{
    Binding binding = (sender as Binding);
    if (binding == null) return;

    Control button = binding.Control;

    if (button == null || args.DesiredType != typeof(Boolean)) return;

    T value = (T)args.Value;
    T controlValue;

    if (Enum.TryParse(button.Tag.ToString(), out controlValue))
    {
        args.Value = value.Equals(controlValue);
    }
    else
    {
        Exception ex = new Exception("String not found in Enum");
        ex.Data.Add("Tag", button.Tag);

        throw ex;
    }
}

public static void ParseSelectedEnum(object sender, ConvertEventArgs args) where T : struct
{
    Binding binding = (sender as Binding);
    if (binding == null) return;

    Control button = binding.Control;
    bool value = (bool)args.Value;

    if (button == null || value != true) return;

    T controlValue;

    if (Enum.TryParse(button.Tag.ToString(), out controlValue))
    {
        args.Value = controlValue;
    }
    else
    {
        Exception ex = new Exception("String not found in Enum");
        ex.Data.Add("Tag", button.Tag);

        throw ex;
    }
}

Then setup your data binding like this:

radioButton1.Tag = "Option1";
radioButton2.Tag = "Option2";

foreach (RadioButtonUx rb in new RadioButtonUx[] { radioButton1, radioButton2 })
{
    Binding b = new Binding("Checked", this, "PropertyRBEnum");
    b.Format += FormatSelectedRadioButton;
    b.Parse += ParseSelectedRadioButton;

    rb.DataBindings.Add(b);
}