Clicking HyperLinks in a RichTextBox without holding down CTRL - WPF

Question

I have a WPF RichTextBox with isReadOnly set to True. I would like users to be able to click on HyperLinks contained within the RichTextBox, withou

Answer 1

Have you tried handling the MouseLeftButtonDown event instead of the Click event?

Answer 2

I changed EventSetter from @hillin's answer. MouseLeftButtonDown didn't work in my code (.Net framework 4.5.2).

<EventSetter Event="RequestNavigate" Handler="Hyperlink_RequestNavigate" />

private void Hyperlink_RequestNavigate(object sender, System.Windows.Navigation.RequestNavigateEventArgs e)
{
    Process.Start(e.Uri.ToString());
}

Answer 3

JHubbard80's answer is a possible solution, it's the easiest way if you do not need the content to be selected.

However I need that :P here is my approach: set a style for the Hyperlinks inside the RichTextBox. The essential is to use a EventSetter to make the Hyperlinks handling the MouseLeftButtonDown event.

<RichTextBox>
    <RichTextBox.Resources>
        <Style TargetType="Hyperlink">
            <Setter Property="Cursor" Value="Hand" />
            <EventSetter Event="MouseLeftButtonDown" Handler="Hyperlink_MouseLeftButtonDown" />
        </Style>
    </RichTextBox.Resources>
</RichTextBox>

And in codebehind:

private void Hyperlink_MouseLeftButtonDown(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
{
    var hyperlink = (Hyperlink)sender;
    Process.Start(hyperlink.NavigateUri.ToString());
}

Thanks to gcores for the inspiaration.

Answer 4

I found a solution. Set IsDocumentEnabled to "True" and set IsReadOnly to "True".

<RichTextBox IsReadOnly="True" IsDocumentEnabled="True" />

Once I did this, the mouse would turn into a 'hand' when I hover over a text displayed within a HyperLink tag. Clicking without holding control will fire the 'Click' event.

I am using WPF from .NET 4. I do not know if earlier versions of .NET do not function as I describe above.

Answer 5

Managed to find a way around this, pretty much by accident.

The content that's loaded into my RichTextBox is just stored (or inputted) as a plain string. I have subclassed the RichTextBox to allow binding against it's Document property.

What's relevant to the question, is that I have an IValueConverter Convert() overload that looks something like this (code non-essential to the solution has been stripped out):

FlowDocument doc = new FlowDocument();
Paragraph graph = new Paragraph();

Hyperlink textLink = new Hyperlink(new Run(textSplit));
textLink.NavigateUri = new Uri(textSplit);
textLink.RequestNavigate += 
  new System.Windows.Navigation.RequestNavigateEventHandler(navHandler);

graph.Inlines.Add(textLink);
graph.Inlines.Add(new Run(nonLinkStrings));

doc.Blocks.Add(graph);

return doc;

This gets me the behavior I want (shoving plain strings into RichTextBox and getting formatting) and it also results in links that behave like a normal link, rather than one that's embedded in a Word document.

Answer 6

If you want to turn Arrow into a Hand cursor always without default system navigation, below is the approach.

<RichTextBox>
            <RichTextBox.Resources>
                <Style TargetType="{x:Type Hyperlink}">                                
                    <EventSetter Event="MouseEnter" Handler="Hyperlink_OnMouseEnter"/>
                </Style>                
            </RichTextBox.Resources>
</RichTextBox>


private void Hyperlink_OnMouseEnter(object sender, MouseEventArgs e)
        {
            var hyperlink = (Hyperlink)sender;
            hyperlink.ForceCursor = true;
            hyperlink.Cursor = Cursors.Hand;
        }