Can differently grouped ICollectionViews still be synchronized between controls?

Question

Suppose I have an in-memory collection of sports players including the college they attended, position they play, and current team, bound to 3 different controls (ListBoxes) in order to browse different players by those 3 different groupings

Is it possible to synchronize the 3 controls with different ICollectionViews so that a selection in one is synchronized with the others? Or is this only possible if they are all bound to the same ICollectionView instance? I have the 3 ListBoxes already set IsSynchronizedWithCurrentItem="true" but I suspect this only works if they're using the same ICollectionView?

This is what I'm doing in my code:

        ICollectionView collegeView = new ListCollectionView(playerDatabase); 
        collegeView.GroupDescriptions.Add(new PropertyGroupDescription("CollegeName")); 
        collegeView.SortDescriptions.Add(new SortDescription("CollegeName", ListSortDirection.Ascending)); 
        collegeView.SortDescriptions.Add(new SortDescription("FirstName", ListSortDirection.Ascending)); 
        lstCollege.ItemsSource = collegeView; 
 
        ICollectionView positionView = new ListCollectionView(playerDatabase); 
        positionView.GroupDescriptions.Add(new PropertyGroupDescription("PositionCode", new NFLPositionGrouper())); 
        positionView.SortDescriptions.Add(new SortDescription("PositionName", ListSortDirection.Ascending)); 
        positionView.SortDescriptions.Add(new SortDescription("FirstName", ListSortDirection.Ascending)); 

The playerDatabase variable is coming from a LINQ to Entity query projecting an anonymous type

Answer 1

Even though you are using different ListCollectionViews, I don't see any reason why you can't still bind all the SelectedItems from the listboxes together, to the same two-way property.

I thought it was a reasonable excuse to knock up an example that others may also find useful, so I've uploaded a project to MSDN Samples, for you to download and try:

 

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/Synchronising-Listbox-61b80a2b

 

Note: It's basic and rough as hell, so don't judge it an any other way than simply to get the concept over.

 

Kind regards,
Pete

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