ScrollIntoView for WPF DataGrid (MVVM)

c#, datagrid, mvvm, scroll, wpf

Solution

This should work. The idea is you have this attached property that you will attach to the `DataGrid`. In the xaml where you attach it, you'll bind it to a property on your `ViewModel`. Whenever you want to programmatically assign a value to the `SelectedItem`, you also set a value to this property, which the attached property is bound to.

I've made the attached property type to be whatever the `SelectedItem` type is, but honestly it doesn't matter what the type is as long as you set it to something different than what it was before. This attached property is just being used as a means to execute some code on the view control (in this case, a `DataGrid`) in an MVVM friendly fashion.

So, that said, here's the code for the attached property:

namespace MyAttachedProperties
{
    public class SelectingItemAttachedProperty
    {
        public static readonly DependencyProperty SelectingItemProperty = DependencyProperty.RegisterAttached(
            "SelectingItem",
            typeof(MySelectionType),
            typeof(SelectingItemAttachedProperty),
            new PropertyMetadata(default(MySelectionType), OnSelectingItemChanged));

        public static MySelectionType GetSelectingItem(DependencyObject target)
        {
            return (MySelectionType)target.GetValue(SelectingItemProperty);
        }

        public static void SetSelectingItem(DependencyObject target, MySelectionType value)
        {
            target.SetValue(SelectingItemProperty, value);
        }

        static void OnSelectingItemChanged(DependencyObject sender, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
        {
            var grid = sender as DataGrid;
            if (grid == null || grid.SelectedItem == null)
                return;

            // Works with .Net 4.5
            grid.Dispatcher.InvokeAsync(() => 
            {
                grid.UpdateLayout();
                grid.ScrollIntoView(grid.SelectedItem, null);
            });

            // Works with .Net 4.0
            grid.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke((Action)(() =>
            {
                grid.UpdateLayout();
                grid.ScrollIntoView(grid.SelectedItem, null);
            }));
        }
    }
}

And here's the xaml snippet:

<Window ...
        xmlns:attachedProperties="clr-namespace:MyAttachedProperties">
    ...
        <DataGrid 
            attachedProperties:SelectingItemAttachedProperty.SelectingItem="{Binding MyViewModel.SelectingItem}">
            ...
        </DataGrid>
    </Grid>

Problem

Original source