WPF Dynamic TreeView Example

When working with hierarchical data in WPF, using a TreeView control can be an effective way to display this data in a structured and organized manner. One common scenario for using a TreeView is when you need to display a company's organizational structure, where each employee element can contain other Employee elements to indicate who reports to whom.

In this example, we will demonstrate how to bind a TreeView to hierarchical XML data that represents the employees in a company. We will also use a HierarchicalDataTemplate to specify the ItemsSource for each TreeViewItem.

A HierarchicalDataTemplate is used to recursively set the ItemsSource for each TreeViewItem in the TreeView. When you set the HierarchicalDataTemplate.ItemsSource property, the value is used when the HierarchicalDataTemplate is applied. This enables you to specify the ItemsSource for a TreeViewItem or any HeaderedItemsControl on the data template.

For example, if you set the ItemTemplate property on a data-bound TreeView, each TreeViewItem that is generated uses the DataTemplate that was assigned to the ItemTemplate property of the TreeView. When you set the ItemsControl.ItemTemplate property and if the ItemsControl generates an ItemsControl for each child item, then the child ItemsControl uses the same ItemTemplate as the parent.

In order to use a HierarchicalDataTemplate with a TreeView, your data source must have a hierarchical object model. This can occur when the data is recursive in nature, such as a file system where folders can contain folders, or a company's organizational structure where employees have other employees as direct reports.

However, there might be times when you want to bind a TreeView to a data source whose depth is not known. In this case, you will need to build a hierarchical representation of the data. For example, an Employee class might contain a collection of Employee objects that are the direct reports of an employee.

By using a HierarchicalDataTemplate and binding your TreeView to hierarchical XML data, you can effectively display complex hierarchical data structures in a WPF application. This can be particularly useful when working with large amounts of data or complex organizational structures.

Wpf dynamic treeview example