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Custom Sorting on C1DataGrid for Silverlight

Sorting and Filtering are very frequently used database operations while working with Grid controls. C1DataGrid for Silverlight supports both of these interactive operations. However, none of its operations are performed at Grid level. Both Sorting and Filerting are done at DataSource. C1DataGrid does not have any internal logic for these operations. But there could be a scenario where the user might require to view the data in a specific manner. Consider an example where we have the following data in the DataSource. aaa BBB AAA bbb XYZ xz jjk If we do default sorting on this set of data, grid will display the data in the following manner Ascending Descending aaa xz AAA XYZ bbb jjk BBB BBB jjk bbb XYZ AAA xz aaa Whereas the customer may wish to see the data where all the words starting lowercase characters are clubbed together and then the words starting with uppercase characters. But C1DataGrid does not have the option to customize the sorting on its own. So what can we do? Here comes Microsoft to our rescue. Using its .Net defined Interfaces we can implement our custom sorting. .Net provides the option of IComparer interface which we can leverage upon to define our own sorting logic on the DataSource. So lets start with the implementation. 1. We start by defining a Class structure used for binding

 public class MyDataClass  
 {  
       public MyDataClass() { }  

       public MyDataClass(string nm)  
       {  
          Name = nm;  
       }  

       public string Name { get; set; }  
 }

2. Next step involves defining Sorting Logic using IComparere interface. We will need to define two Classes for Ascending and descending sort.

class MyDataClass_SortByCaseSensitivityASc : IComparer<MyDataClass>  
{  
     public int Compare(MyDataClass x, MyDataClass y)  
     {  
           int valX = (int)x.Name[0];  
           int valY = (int)y.Name[0];  

           if (valX > valY)  
              return 1;  
           else if (valX < valY)  
              return -1;  
           else  
              return 0;  
     }  
}  

class MyDataClass_SortByCaseSensitivityDesc : IComparer<MyDataClass>  
{  
     public int Compare(MyDataClass x, MyDataClass y)  
     {  
         int valX = (int)x.Name[0];  
         int valY = (int)y.Name[0];  

         if (valX < valY)  
            return 1;  
         else if (valX > valY)  
            return -1;  
         else  
            return 0;  
     }  
}

3. To define the sorting logic, we need to handle the sorting event for the grid where we will apply the Sorting on the actual datasource and rebind the C1DataGrid ItemSource.

// variable used to mark the ascending or descending  
// state of the grid  
int flag = -1;  

void c1DataGrid1_SortChanging(object sender, C1.Silverlight.DataGrid.DataGridSortChangingEventArgs e)  
{  
     e.Cancel = true;  

     if (e.ChangingColumns[0].Column.Name == "Name")  
     {  
        //Ascending Order  
        if (flag == -1 || flag == 1)  
        {  
           c1DataGrid1.ItemsSource = null;  
           MyDataClass\_SortByCaseSensitivityASc mAsc = new MyDataClass\_SortByCaseSensitivityASc();  
           myList.Sort(mAsc);  
           c1DataGrid1.ItemsSource = myList;  
           flag = 0;  
        }  
        //Descending Order  
        else  
        {  
          c1DataGrid1.ItemsSource = null;  
          MyDataClass\_SortByCaseSensitivityDesc mDesc = new MyDataClass\_SortByCaseSensitivityDesc();  
          myList.Sort(mDesc);  
          c1DataGrid1.ItemsSource = myList;  
          flag = 1;  
        }  
    }  
}

Once the above code is implemented, sorting the Grid will display the data in the given order. Ascending Descending AAA xz BBB jjk XYZ bbb aaa aaa bbb XYZ jjk BBB xz AAA Sorting logic mentioned above is just an example. You can do much more on this. You may define any logic based on any of the Class DataMembers and implement the sorting on a different column. If you wish to discover more on IComparer class you can visit the given MSDN link. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8ehhxeaf%28v=vs.100%29.aspx#Y0 Download Sample

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