You should not create objects of this class in your code. To create a collection view for a collection that only implements IEnumerable, create a CollectionViewSource object, add your collection to the Source property, and get the collection view from the View property.

You can think of a collection view as a layer on top of a binding source collection that allows you to navigate and display the collection based on sort, filter, and group queries, all without having to manipulate the underlying source collection itself. If the source collection implements the INotifyCollectionChanged interface, the changes that raise the CollectionChanged event are propagated to the views.

Because a view does not change the underlying source collection, a source collection can have multiple views associated with it. By using views, you can display the same data in different ways. For example, you can use two views on a collection of Task objects to show tasks sorted by priority on one part of the page and grouped by area on another part of the page.

In WPF applications, all collections have an associated default collection view. Rather than working with the collection directly, the binding engine always accesses the collection through the associated view. To get the default view, use the CollectionViewSource..::.GetDefaultView method. An internal class based on CollectionView is the default view for collections that implement only IEnumerable. ListCollectionView is the default view for collections that implement IList. BindingListCollectionView is the default view for collections that implement IBindingListView or IBindingList.

Alternatively, you can create a view of your collection in Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) by using the CollectionViewSource class and then bind your control to that view. The CollectionViewSource class is the XAML representation of the CollectionView class. For an example, see How to: Sort and Group Data Using a View in XAML.

For more information, see "Binding to Collections" in Data Binding Overview.

Views allow the same data collection to be viewed in different ways, depending on sorting, filtering, or grouping criteria. Every collection has one shared default view, which is used as the actual binding source when a binding specifies a collection as its source. This example shows how to get the default view of a collection.

To create the view, you need an object reference to the collection. This data object can be obtained by referencing your own code-behind object, by getting the data context, by getting a property of the data source, or by getting a property of the binding. This example shows how to get the DataContext of a data object and use it to directly obtain the default collection view for this collection.

myCollectionView = (CollectionView)
    CollectionViewSource.GetDefaultView(rootElem.DataContext);

In this example, the root element is a StackPanel. The DataContext is set to myDataSource, which refers to a data provider that is an ObservableCollection<(Of <(T>)>) of Order objects.

<StackPanel.DataContext>
  <Binding Source="{StaticResource myDataSource}"/>
</StackPanel.DataContext>

Alternatively, you can instantiate and bind to your own collection view using the CollectionViewSource class. This collection view is only shared by controls that bind to it directly. For an example, see the How to Create a View section in the Data Binding Overview.

For examples of the functionality provided by a collection view, see How to: Sort Data in View, How to: Filter Data in a View, and How to: Navigate Through the Objects in a Data CollectionView.

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