GridViewComboBoxColumn and nulls

[David Brenchley]

I have set the ItemsSource of my combobox column to a list of custom objects.  This works fine and I am able to update my object with the selected item from the combobox.  The problem is that my users will need to be able to set this column to null, so I add a null to the list of objects.  I can see the null in the list fine, but whenever I select it, the property of the DataMember SalesRep does NOT get set at all.  I have to select a different item in the list.  I've put a break point on the Property set and it isn't firing at all on null.  Is this a bug, or is there a "better" way?

    <DataTemplate DataType="{x:Type lib:Security.UserInfo}">
        <TextBlock>
                <TextBlock.Text>
                    <MultiBinding StringFormat="{}{0}, {1}">
                        <Binding Path="LastName" />
                        <Binding Path="FirstName" />
                    </MultiBinding>
                </TextBlock.Text>
        </TextBlock>
    </DataTemplate>  

...

<telerik1:GridViewComboBoxColumn Name="SalesRepColumn" Header="Sales Rep" DataMemberBinding="{Binding SalesRep, ValidatesOnDataErrors=True,ValidatesOnExceptions=True,UpdateSourceTrigger=PropertyChanged}"/>

...

CollectionViewSource userInfoSource = this.FindResource("userInfoSource") as CollectionViewSource;

var ul = UserInfoList.GetUserInfoList().OrderBy(u => u.LastName).ToList();                        
ul.Insert(0, null);
userInfoSource.Source = ul;
SalesRepColumn.ItemsSource = userInfoSource.View;

...

public UserInfo SalesRep {
	get { return GetProperty(SalesRepProperty); }
	set { _salesRep = value; }
}

[Pavel Pavlov]

Hi David Brenchley,

After some research I have found that the problem is in the combo box . RadComboBox  does not support  such setup. The same way behaves the Microsoft ComboBox.

The workarround I may suggest here is to have a special value to substitute the null value in the combo source - something like the "null object pattern".

Sincerely yours,
Pavel Pavlov
the Telerik team