Customize Long Values in C1TrueDBGrid

C1**TrueDBGrid for Winforms can be bound to a database that has different types of values including text, numbers or a combination of both. Sometimes these values are longer than the width of the data column, hence the cell text in this column is simply cut off. It only displays the text that fits the cell width. For example the value 12345.678910 might be displayed as 1234.67 or a bit longer depending on the column width. You would need to enlarge the column width to view the complete text. However, there is a possibility that the user has fixed width columns. The partial view of the text, may give the user an impression of the wrong cell value. This blog explains how you can change the appearance of the cells with long text values, so as to make the users understand that the cell value is longer than what is displayed. The approach in this blog changes the long values to display dots at the end of the cell text(Cell value 12345.678910 is displayed as 12345.67...). It does not change the actual cell value, only the display value has been changed. When you enter edit mode, the complete value of the cell is displayed. Take a look at what we're going to accomplish through this blog : We can accomplish this by drawing the cells manually. We'll use the OwnerDrawCell event to draw the cell contents. Here is the code snippet used in the OwnerDrawCell** event to get the desired results. All we did is compare the length of the text in the cell with the cell width. If the length of the cell text is longer we keep on dividing the string that represents the cell value to substrings, until the cell width is longer than the cell text. At the end, we simply append the dots to display the desired results in the cell.

void c1TrueDBGrid1_OwnerDrawCell(object sender, C1.Win.C1TrueDBGrid.OwnerDrawCellEventArgs e)  
{  
  e.Handled = true;  
  e.Graphics.FillRectangle(new SolidBrush(e.Style.BackColor), e.CellRect);  
  object val = c1TrueDBGrid1.Columns[e.Col].CellValue(e.Row);  
  SizeF size = e.Graphics.MeasureString(val.ToString(), c1TrueDBGrid1.Splits[0].DisplayColumns[e.Col].Style.Font);  
  int width = (int)Math.Ceiling(size.Width);  
  int cellwidth = e.CellRect.Width;  
  if (width > cellwidth)  
  {  
    int r = 1;  
    string s = e.Text;  
    string ns = "";  
    while (width > cellwidth - 5)  
    {  
      ns = s.Substring(0, s.Length - r);  
      size = e.Graphics.MeasureString(ns.ToString(), c1TrueDBGrid1.Splits[0].DisplayColumns[e.Col].Style.Font);  
      width = (int)Math.Ceiling(size.Width);  
      r++;  
      s = ns;  
    }  
    ns = ns + "....";  
    e.Graphics.DrawString(ns, e.Style.Font, new SolidBrush(Color.Black), new PointF(e.CellRect.X, e.CellRect.Y));  
   }  
   else  
   {  
     e.Graphics.DrawString(e.Text, e.Style.Font, new SolidBrush(Color.Black), new PointF(e.CellRect.X, e.CellRect.Y));  
   }  
}  

Please refer to the attached samples for complete implementation. Download C# Sample Download VB Sample