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Table Control Pattern

  • Article

Describes guidelines and conventions for implementing ITableProvider, including information about properties and methods. The Table control pattern is used to support controls that act as containers for a collection of child elements.

The children of the container element must implement ITableItemProvider and be organized in a two-dimensional logical coordinate system that can be traversed by row and column. This control pattern is analogous to IGridProvider with the distinction that any control implementing ITableProvider must also expose a column and/or row header relationship for each child element. For examples of controls that implement this control pattern, see Control Types and Their Supported Control Patterns.

This topic contains the following sections.

Implementation Guidelines and Conventions

When implementing the Table control pattern, note the following guidelines and conventions:

  • Access to the content of individual cells is through a two-dimensional logical coordinate system or array provided by the required, concurrent implementation of IGridProvider.

  • A column or row header can be contained within a table object or be a separate header object that is associated with a table object.

  • Column and row headers may include both a primary header as well as any supporting headers.

    Note

    This concept becomes evident in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet where a user has defined a First name column. This column now has two headers, including the First name header defined by the user, and the alphanumeric designation for that column assigned by the application.

     

  • See Grid Control Pattern for related grid functionality.

    The following image shows a table with complex column headers.

    table with complex column headers

    The following image shows a table with an ambiguous ITableProvider::RowOrColumnMajor property.

    table with an ambiguous roworcolumnmajor property

Required Members for ITableProvider

The following properties and methods are required for implementing the ITableProvider interface.

Required members Member type Notes
RowOrColumnMajor Property None
GetColumnHeaders Method None
GetRowHeaders Method None

 

This control pattern has no associated events.

Conceptual

Control Types and Their Supported Control Patterns

TableItem Control Pattern

UI Automation Control Patterns Overview

UI Automation Tree Overview