ListViewItem Class

The ListView control is similar to a ListBox in that it displays a list of items. The main difference is that the ListView control provides a number of different ways items can be viewed by the user. The ListViewItem class defines the appearance, behavior, and data associated with an item that is displayed in the ListView control. ListViewItem objects can be displayed in the ListView control in one of four different views. Items can be displayed as large or small icons or as small icons in a vertical list. Items can also have subitems that contain information that is related to the parent item. The fourth view style, details view, allows you to display the item and its subitems in a grid with column headers that can be used to identify the information being displayed in a subitem.

Most of the properties of the ListViewItem class provide ways to change the display of the item in the ListView control it is associated with. The BackColor, ForeColor, and Font properties allow you to change how the text of the item is displayed in the ListView control. The ImageIndex property allows you to specify the image to load from the ImageList that is assigned to the ListView control (by setting the LargeImageList or SmallImageList properties of the ListView). Items can display check boxes in order to obtain item choices from the user in a way similar to a CheckedListBox control. You can use the Checked property to determine if an item is checked, or to select or clear the check box at run time. Items can display any number of subitems when the View property of the associated ListView control is set to Details and columns are defined in the ListView.ColumnHeaderCollection of the ListView control. You can add subitems to an item by calling the Add method of the ListViewItem.ListViewSubItemCollection class. The SubItems property allows you to gain access to the ListViewItem.ListViewSubItemCollection class and its members.

Some of the properties and methods of the ListViewItem class are item-specific versions of properties and methods in the ListView control. For example, the EnsureVisible method is similar to the ListView version of the method, but the ListViewItem version affects only the current item.

The ListViewItem class also provides methods that are not versions of ListView methods. The BeginEdit method places the item's text into edit mode so the user can change the item's text (when the LabelEdit property of the ListView control is set to true). The Clone method allows you to create copies of existing ListViewItem objects to reuse in other ListView controls.

The following code example creates a ListView control with three ListViewItem objects specified and three ListViewItem.ListViewSubItem objects specified for each item. The example also creates ColumnHeader objects to display the subitems in details view. Two ImageList objects are also created in the code example to provide images for the ListViewItem objects. These ImageList objects are added to the LargeImageList and SmallImageList properties. The example uses the following properties in creating the ListView control:

• View

• LabelEdit

• AllowColumnReorder

• CheckBoxes

• FullRowSelect

• GridLines

• Sorting

You need to add the code to a Form and call the method created in the example from the constructor or another method on the form. The example requires that images named MySmallImage1, MySmallImage2, MyLargeImage1, and MyLargeImage2 are located in the root directory of drive C.

		private void CreateMyListView()
		{
			// Create a new ListView control.
			ListView listView1 = new ListView();
			listView1.Bounds = new Rectangle(new Point(10,10), new Size(300,200));

			// Set the view to show details.
			listView1.View = View.Details;
			// Allow the user to edit item text.
			listView1.LabelEdit = true;
			// Allow the user to rearrange columns.
			listView1.AllowColumnReorder = true;
			// Display check boxes.
			listView1.CheckBoxes = true;
			// Select the item and subitems when selection is made.
			listView1.FullRowSelect = true;
			// Display grid lines.
			listView1.GridLines = true;
			// Sort the items in the list in ascending order.
			listView1.Sorting = SortOrder.Ascending;
            			
			// Create three items and three sets of subitems for each item.
			ListViewItem item1 = new ListViewItem("item1",0);
			// Place a check mark next to the item.
			item1.Checked = true;
			item1.SubItems.Add("1");
			item1.SubItems.Add("2");
			item1.SubItems.Add("3");
			ListViewItem item2 = new ListViewItem("item2",1);
			item2.SubItems.Add("4");
			item2.SubItems.Add("5");
			item2.SubItems.Add("6");
			ListViewItem item3 = new ListViewItem("item3",0);
			// Place a check mark next to the item.
			item3.Checked = true;
			item3.SubItems.Add("7");
			item3.SubItems.Add("8");
			item3.SubItems.Add("9");

			// Create columns for the items and subitems.
			// Width of -2 indicates auto-size.
			listView1.Columns.Add("Item Column", -2, HorizontalAlignment.Left);
			listView1.Columns.Add("Column 2", -2, HorizontalAlignment.Left);
			listView1.Columns.Add("Column 3", -2, HorizontalAlignment.Left);
			listView1.Columns.Add("Column 4", -2, HorizontalAlignment.Center);

			//Add the items to the ListView.
            		listView1.Items.AddRange(new ListViewItem[]{item1,item2,item3});

			// Create two ImageList objects.
			ImageList imageListSmall = new ImageList();
			ImageList imageListLarge = new ImageList();

			// Initialize the ImageList objects with bitmaps.
			imageListSmall.Images.Add(Bitmap.FromFile("C:\\MySmallImage1.bmp"));
			imageListSmall.Images.Add(Bitmap.FromFile("C:\\MySmallImage2.bmp"));
			imageListLarge.Images.Add(Bitmap.FromFile("C:\\MyLargeImage1.bmp"));
			imageListLarge.Images.Add(Bitmap.FromFile("C:\\MyLargeImage2.bmp"));

			//Assign the ImageList objects to the ListView.
			listView1.LargeImageList = imageListLarge;
			listView1.SmallImageList = imageListSmall;

			// Add the ListView to the control collection.
			this.Controls.Add(listView1);
		}

.NET Framework

.NET Framework Client Profile

Windows 8 Consumer Preview, Windows Server 8 Beta, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 SP2, Windows Server 2008 R2 (Server Core Role supported with SP1 or later; Itanium not supported)

The .NET Framework does not support all versions of every platform. For a list of the supported versions, see .NET Framework System Requirements.

Reference

Other Resources