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Get notified of collection changes

My class has a public List field. I want to detect when someone changes this collection. However, writing my own Add/Remove wrapper around this collection seems wasteful. Is there a way to get notifications about changes in collection with delegates or something like that?

Use ObservableCollection<T> instead
you may find reference here.

There already exists a collection you've described and it's called ObservableCollection.
It has CollectionChanged event, so just subscribe your event handler there and i'll get called every time item is added or removed from collection..

Use BindingList<T> instead. It offers a ListChanged event. It is also accepted as DataSource in many controls such as a Listbox or a Grid.
As mentioned in this answer the BindingList offers a lot more than ObservableCollection
If you want to change a list in a listbox and changes to that list be reflected to the UI, you can set a BindingList<> as datasource to the Listbox and then simply manipulate the list. The Listbox will handle the ListChanged event and will display changes without having to manually do it by your self.
If you are going to use it in Winforms you should go with BindingList and if you are going to use it on a WPF app then go with ObservableCollection.

Turn the binding on and off

Suppose you have a ViewModel with an ObservableCollection (OC) that is bound to some control inside the View.
Is there a way to temporarily disable the binding between the OC and the Control without removing the binding ? I want to have the ability to modify my ObservableCollection without having the View being informed of it.
The reason for that is simple: I am doing a lot of Add() and Insert() operations on the OC. Most of the time everything is OK but sometimes I am calling Add() so frequently that the updates in the View are looking unpleasant. For these periods of time I want to 'switch off' the binding beforehand and 'turn it on' afterwards.
Has anybody been in a similar situation / does anybody has a tip ?

Just wrap up ObservableCollection (even inheriting from it) and then override mthod OnCollectionChanged by adding custom logic which will postpone event triggering considering your requirements, I believe this is a pretty standard way to implement own defferable observable collection.

When I have a lot of items in the collection, I prefer to use a List<> as the source of a CollectionViewSource. Then the view binds to the CollectionViewSource.View. CollectionViewSource has methods DeferRefresh() and Refresh() that let you do all the background work of changing the source list without view notifications. The performance of CollectionViewSource is way better than an ObservableCollection, plus it supports filtering. Filtering might be what you need if you are constantly adding and removing items.

ComboBox doesn't automatically update when DataSource changes?

For some reason when adding or remove items from the DataSource (a simple BindingList) the ComboBox updates accordingly but if I edit an item like this, it doesn't update automatically:
myBindingList[index].Name = "NewName";
myBindingList[index].Value = newValue;
In order to get it to update when I edit an item as opposed to creating or removing an item I have to do this after the change is made:
myComboBox.DataSource = null;
myComboBox.DataSource = myBindingList;
This fixes the problem but it seems like a rather messy solution. Also with large lists it may become slow (premature optimization I know) but still is there a way to force the ComboBox to update without completely re-assigning its DataSource?
Thanks for reading.

this is stated in the MSDN forums:
The IBindingList interface contains the ListChanged event where
controls like the combobox hook up into if the underlying datasource
assigned to it implements the said interface. your datasource must
raise the corresponding ListChanged with proper ListChangeEventArgs if
ever you add, remove, change, etc. your IBindingList implementor.
this way, whenever the underlying source you used to bind to your
combobox is changed, the corresponding UI control (combobox) is
refreshed.
you say you are using BindingList and in fact you do get the combobox to reflect add or remove items events. I think you should do the update of the items already inside your BindingList in another way because looks like the proper BindingList events are not firing.
you could either investigate into that or simply live with reset and reassign the DataSource, I don't think is too bad, you are in Statefull Windows Forms application not in SatetLess Webforms so you do have your objects there all the time :)

You need observable collections and IPropertyChange implementation:
ComboBox bound to a ObservableCollection does not update

INotifyCollectionChanged -- How often does it fire (and how do they make it so efficient/fast)?

Basically, I'm wondering how it is actually efficient here.
Sample code:
void GetItems()
{
foreach (var item in items)
myObservableCollection.Add(item);
}
Won't this fire off the CollectionChanged event every time causing the UI to have to refresh everytime? Or does it do it so that it waits til the GetItems function is done?
Basically, it seems that WPF handles it very well, and I'm wondering how they did that.

Optimizing Performance: Data Binding provides some background on how data bindings are resolved, including the performance implications of different items sources. Take a look at the Binding to an ItemsSource section.
Consider a scenario in which you have a CLR List object that holds
a list of employees that you want to display in a ListBox. To create a
correspondence between these two objects, you would bind your employee
list to the ItemsSource property of the ListBox. However, suppose you
have a new employee joining your group. You might think that in order
to insert this new person into your bound ListBox values, you would
simply add this person to your employee list and expect this change to
be recognized by the data binding engine automatically.
That assumption would prove false; in actuality, the change will not
be reflected in the ListBox automatically. This is because the CLR
List object does not automatically raise a collection changed
event. In order to get the ListBox to pick up the changes, you would
have to recreate your list of employees and re-attach it to the
ItemsSource property of the ListBox. While this solution works, it
introduces a huge performance impact. Each time you reassign the
ItemsSource of ListBox to a new object, the ListBox first throws away
its previous items and regenerates its entire list. The performance
impact is magnified if your ListBox maps to a complex DataTemplate.
A very efficient solution to this problem is to make your employee
list an ObservableCollection. An ObservableCollection object
raises a change notification which the data binding engine can
receive. The event adds or removes an item from an ItemsControl
without the need to regenerate the entire list.
Update time for 1 item (ms)
To a CLR List object = 1656 ms
To an ObservableCollection = 20 ms
WPF never binds directly to a collection. If you specify a collection as a binding source, WPF actually binds to the collection's default view.
A collection view is a layer on top of a binding source collection
that allows you to navigate and display the source collection based on
sort, filter, and group queries, without having to change the
underlying source collection itself. A collection view also maintains
a pointer to the current item in the collection. If the source
collection implements the INotifyCollectionChanged interface, the
changes raised by the CollectionChanged event are propagated to the
views.

The event will fire for every change.
The GUI does not have to react and refresh every time, it can postpone that.
I know WinForms will optimize this, I think WPF has a similar approach.

If you want to see how often the UI requests the fresh results expose it as a public property and put a debug line in the get (assessor) of the public property for myObservableCollection.

Best way to unbind wpf listview

I have WPF listview bound to collection of objects. Objects are continuously added in to collection from remote server and same is reflecting in to listview. Now we have requirement that we should be able to freeze listview for some time,
That is objects should still get added in to collection but should not appear in listview till we unfreeze it ( we have button to freeze and unfreeze) . What is the best way to do it, when listview is bound to collection ? How to unbind collection and rebind it ? and Will i still able to filter and sort when collection is unbound from listview ? Waiting for answer please reply
Regards
Sandeep

You can just break the binding. In your freeze button handler say:
listView = _list
Which will freeze it at that point. Then in your unfreeze handler set the binding back up:
listView.SetBinding(ListView.ItemsSourceProperty, New Binding("_list"))
I hope this helps.

You should just stop updating the collection when the list is frozen, if you must keep adding to the collection even when the list is frozen (if the same collection is used somewhere else that shouldn't be frozen) then consider having two collections, one always updated and the other one bound to the listview.

What is the list type you are using as the data-source? Can you use BindingList<T>? If so, this has a settable RaiseListChangedEvents property, allowing you to turn off notifications. This will probably get very messy re your last points, though (sort/filter).
Personally, I'd work with 2 lists - the bound one, and the one that the server is updating. When paused, simply stop pumping data between the two. This should leave the paused view free for sorting / filtering etc.