WinForms: Respond to BindingSource being applied

Question

Is there an event that I can latch onto to be notified when the datasource has been applied to its bound controls?

Or is there another event, in which I am guarantee

Answer 1

Data binding should already been activated before your form load event. The problem you are experiencing is because due to to data binding infrastructure optimization, binding does not happen for invisible controls until they become visible for a first time. This is probably because the designers of WF were thinking that the data binding will be used to bind data properties only (like Text etc.) and doesn't make sense to do that for an invisible controls.

If you are not afraid to use some internals (or as user HighCore would say hacks), then the following helper would help solving your problem (we are using something similar for a years):

public static class ControlUtils
{
    static readonly Action CreateControlFunc = (Action)Delegate.CreateDelegate(typeof(Action),
        typeof(Control).GetMethod("CreateControl", BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.NonPublic, null, new[] { typeof(bool) }, null));
    public static void CreateControls(this Control target)
    {
        if (!target.Created)
            CreateControlFunc(target, true);
        else
            for (int i = 0; i < target.Controls.Count; i++)
                target.Controls[i].CreateControls();
    }
}

and just put at the beginning of your form load event handler

this.CreateControls();