Create pop-up user control for row editing

Article information
Article relates to	RadGridView for WinForms, Q1 2012 SP1
Created by	Stefan Stefanov
Last modified	April, 2012
Last modified by	Stefan Stefanov

HOW-TO
Create a UserControl, that pops up underneath the current row after clicking "Edit" button. The UserControl provides allows editing the row.
 
SOLUTION
Let's start with creating the UserControl. There you can add the some controls that will help you to edit the cells in the grid. In our case we have added RadTextBox, RadDateTimePicker and RadButton. That is all you need to do in the UserControl. Perhaps you can modify some of these controls' properties (i.e. NullDate/ MinDate for RadDateTimePicker)

Then in your main form add a RadGridView, subscribe to its CreateCell event and populate the grid. In our case it is manually populated by using our BingGrid() method, where two GridViewTextBoxColumns and one GridViewDateTimeColumn are added. The first text box column is going to be used for storing our "Edit" button, and the other two respectively for storing the grid cells values.

Now we have to use our CustomCell class which is going to be used in the first text box column. For this purpose we are creating a descendant of GridDataCellElement class where we add two fields - one for RadDropDownButton (which is going to be our "Edit" button) and one for our UserControl. Then override the CreateChildElements() method, where you have to instantiate RadDropDownButton, manage its properties by your discretion and add it as a child of the CustomCell. 

Afterwards create a custom method (in this case CreateDropDownButton()), which returns RadMenuHostItem, that hosts an instance of the UserControl. The returned value is added to the items collection of RadDropDownButton the  in CreateChildElements() method. In this method we also subscribe to RadDropDownButton's click event and for our saveButton's (from the user control) click event. 

The RadDropDownButton's click event is used to retrieve the values from the cell into the user controls' textbox and date time picker respectively.

The saveButton`s click event is used to set the values from these controls, back into the grid cells.

In the project below, you can see the full implementation.