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Automatically Generated Columns

Updated on Oct 2, 2026

The treelist allows you to automatically generate a column for each public property of its model rather than defining each column manually.

To enable Automatic Column Generation, set the AutoGenerateColumns parameter of the treelist to true.

The content of this article will be separated into groups for clarity:

Basics
- Declare Explicit Columns
Customization
- Example
Notes

Basics

To display all model fields in the treelist, just set its AutoGenerateColumns parameter to true.

If you don't need explicitly declared columns (such as a command column or frozen columns) the TreeListColumns tag is not required.

The auto-generated columns are not Expandable and the treelist will look like a grid. See the Customization section below to see how to set up at least one expandable column.

Use the AutoGenerateColumns parameter to generate columns out of a model

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Declare Explicit Columns

The treelist can consist of both Automatically Generated and explicitly declared columns.

The following examples show how you can control their order and positions:

Default Column Order
Define Explicit Column Order

Default Column Order

By default the Automatically Generated Columns are rendered after the manually declared ones.

Observe the default positioning of the Automatically Generated Columns

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To set explicit position of the Automatically Generated Columns you can use the TreeListAutoGeneratedColumns tag inside the TreeListColumns tag and place it in the order you want it to have in relation to the columns you declare.

When the TreeListAutoGeneratedColumns tag is used the AutoGenerateColumns parameter of the treelist must also set to true.

Observe explicitly set position of the Automatically Generated Columns between a Checkbox and Command columns

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Customization

You can use data annotation attributes to control the column generation, in addition to the options explained above:

You can set the Title of the column through the [Display(Name="The Desired Title")] attribute on the fields of your model.
You can set the [Display(AutoGenerateField=false)] attribute over a property of your model if you want to prevent auto-generation of a column from that field.
You can prevent data mutation by setting the [Editable] attribute to false on fields of your model.
The properties that do not have a setter or the setter is not accessible (private) will not be editable either.
You can set custom width to all auto-generated columns through the ColumnWidth parameter of TreeListAutoGeneratedColumns. By default they will be equally distributed to fill the width of the treelist.
- To enable horizontal scrolling, the ColumnWidth parameter has to be set so that the sum of all columns is greater than the treelist width. You can find more information in the Column Width article.

To use the attributes listed above the System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations using statement has to be present in the file with your model. With Popup editing, you can use validation attributes in addition to the customization attributes.

Example

This example shows how to:

Define an expandable column to showcase hierarchy (define it explicitly, and skip it from column generation through the [Display(AutoGenerateField = false)] attribute).
Use data annotation attributes to
- set the column titles (e.g., Email)
- make a field non-editable (e.g., Id)
- hide a field from the treelist (e.g., ParentId)
- validate the data (e.g., Name)
Use the [Display(AutoGenerateField = false)] attribute to prevent a column from being generated, so you can declare it yourself and customize it (e.g., Name)
Select the order of the columns and set explicit position of the autogenerated Columns
Make CUD operations (only basic Editing is implemented here for brevity)

Observe the behavior of auto-generated columns with some customizations.

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Notes

When the component initializes, it expects to know what columns to render before the data loads.

If the component is bound to a collection of dynamic objects (such as Dictionary or ExpandoObject), the component cannot know what columns to render, due to the nature of these objects. Therefore, the AutoGenerateColumns feature is not applicable in such scenarios. Columns must be declared explicitly or with a loop. Examples of such setups are available at Binding Grid to ExpandoObject.