Try the following:

Drop a comboxbox onto a windows form.

Add the following code to the forms constructor:

List _List = new List();
_List.Add(null);
_List.Add(“A”);
comboBox1.DataSource = _List;

The comboxbox drop down is not populated.

Populate the list the other way around and the list will only have 1 item.

I have finally got the binding list down to a useful class plus an attribute.

This is not quite an attribute based approach but would be very useful for custom collections. 

DisplayNameAttribute is the useful meand of marking the column as being included. 

This would make a useful generic. 

My Fields string array sorts and filters the columns:

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;

namespace WindowsApplicationDataBinding
{
    public class Node
    {
        private string _Name;
        [DisplayName(“Full Name”)]
        public string Name{ get{return _Name;} set{_Name = Name;}}

        private int _Age;

        [DisplayName(“Age (years)”)]
        public int Age
        {
            get { return _Age; }
            set { _Age = value; }
        }

        public Node(string name, int age)
        {
            _Name = name;
            _Age = age;
        }
 

        // I don’t want this shown in the list

        public string Birthday { get { return “Unknown”; } }

    }
   
    public class BindingClass : BindingList<Node>, ITypedList
    {
        private string[] _Fields = new string[] {“Name”,”Age”};
       
        private PropertyDescriptorCollection _Description = null;

        #region ITypedList Members

        public PropertyDescriptorCollection GetItemProperties(PropertyDescriptor[] listAccessors)
        {
            if (_Description == null)
            {               
                // The default sort is alphabetical by field name.

               PropertyDescriptorCollection Temp =
                    TypeDescriptor.GetProperties(typeof(Node)).Sort(_Fields);
                _Description = new PropertyDescriptorCollection(null);
                foreach (PropertyDescriptor pd in Temp)
                {
                    foreach(string s in _Fields)
                    {
                        if (s == pd.Name)
                        {
                            _Description.Add(pd);
                        }
                    }
                }
               
            }
            return _Description;
        }

        public string GetListName(PropertyDescriptor[] listAccessors)
        {
            return typeof(Node).Name;
        }

        #endregion
    }
}

 

I have got closer to cleaning up the BindingList<> problem:

using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;

namespace WindowsApplicationDataBinding
{
public class Node
{
private string _Name;
public string Name{ get{return _Name;} set{_Name = Name;}}

private int _Age;

public int Age
{
get { return _Age; }
set { _Age = value; }
}

public Node(string name, int age)
{
_Name = name;
_Age = age;
}

public string Birthday { get { return “Unknown”; } }

}

public class BindingClass : BindingList, ITypedList
{
private PropertyDescriptorCollection _Description = null;

#region ITypedList Members

public PropertyDescriptorCollection GetItemProperties(PropertyDescriptor[] listAccessors)
{
if (_Description == null)
{
_Description = TypeDescriptor.GetProperties(typeof(Node)).Sort(new string[] {“Name”, “Age”});
}
return _Description;
}

public string GetListName(PropertyDescriptor[] listAccessors)
{
return typeof(Node).Name;
}

#endregion
}
}

This version allows the application to specify the sort order of the columns.

The next step is to move this into an attribute based version.

It would also be useful if the description and hidden could be set on the same attribute.

What I want is to mark node as:

[BindingDetails(Description=”First Name”,Order=1,Hidden=False)]

string Name …

I am having some trouble with the BindingList<>

There does not seem to be a simple means of defining the sort order of the columns in theunderlying type.  I would have assumed that there would be some form of attribute based approach to this. 

Here is a small sample of my experiments: 

    public class Node
    {
        private string _Name;
        public string Name{ get{return _Name;} set{_Name = Name;}}

        private int _Age;

        public int Age
        {
            get { return _Age; }
            set { _Age = value; }
        }

        public Node(string name, int age)
        {
            _Name = name;
            _Age = age;
        }

    }
   
    public class BindingClass : BindingList<Node>
    {
        public BindingClass()
        {
           
        }
    }
 

… 

        private BindingClass _Data = new BindingClass();
        
        public Form1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            
            _Data.Add(new Node(“Tom”,50));
            _Data.Add(new Node(“Dick”, 40));
            _Data.Add(new Node(“Harry”, 30));
            dataGridView1.DataSource = _Data;
            dataGridView1.Columns[0].DataPropertyName = “Name”;
            dataGridView1.Columns[0].HeaderText = “First Name”;
            dataGridView1.Columns[1].DataPropertyName = “Age”;
            dataGridView1.Columns[1].HeaderText = “Age”;
         }

This seems to be the least code needed to define the column order, titles and names.

The following is the SQL required to get what is needed from a SQL Server 2000 so that a read-only DAL can be generated from a view.

SELECT obj.name AS VIEW_NAME,
       col.name AS COLUMN_NAME,
       types.name AS COL_DATATYPE,
       col.length
FROM syscolumns col
JOIN sysobjects obj ON col.id = obj.id AND obj.xtype = ‘V’
JOIN systypes types ON col.xtype = types.xtype
WHERE obj.name NOT LIKE ‘SYS%’
ORDER BY obj.name, col.colorder

This is the MSDN article on creating a MDI Menu item from a toolstrip.