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Preventing user selection but allowing selection programmatically

I have a listview control in my windows application, which is populated with some set of items. I will make the selection of an item programmatically by setting ListViewItem.Selected property to true. But I want to prevent the user from selecting an item in the listview. i.e., it should be always selected programmatically. I can prevent the user selection by disabling the control, but disabling the control will also disable the scroll bars which is not correct.
Even I have created a custom listview control and implemented a ItemSelectionChanging eventhandler using WndProc check link, using which i can cancel the event as shown below,
private void lstLiveTables_ItemSelectionChanging(object sender, ListViewExItemSelectionChangingEventArgs e)
{
e.Cancel = true;
}
But again, this will cancel the event, even for an item selected programmatically. My question, is there anyway to identify whether the selection is made manually (by user) or programmatically in SelectedIndexChanged or using WndProc Message.
Note: If it is required, I will upload the code of CustomListView control.
Update 1
Thanks emartel. It was a good thought. Even I tried to achieve the same thing by subscribing to the event only before selecting the item and removed it immediately after selecting. By this way, upon selection the event will be immediately triggered and it will continue. This is working fine.
this.lstTables.SelectedIndexChanged += new System.EventHandler(this.lstTables_SelectedIndexChanged);
item.Selected = true;
this.lstTables.SelectedIndexChanged -= new System.EventHandler(this.lstTables_SelectedIndexChanged);
But again I have a problem that, if the user selects an item manually, nothing will happen (no event will be triggered) but the item alone will be highlighted. Once an item is highlighted and if i try to select the same item programmatically nothing is happening i.e., the SelectedIndexChanged event is not getting triggered for that item as it is already highlighted.
Note: Same behavior even if I follow the Flag approach suggested by you.
Update 2
I can solve this issue by having my own method instead of handling through events as emartel's suggestion. But my question is, according to my update 1, is there anyway to trigger the SelectedIndexChanged event when the item is highlighted but not actually selected?

public FrmTest()
{
list.ItemSelectionChanged += list_ItemSelectionChanged;
}
private bool changing;
private void list_ItemSelectionChanged(object sender, ListViewItemSelectionChangedEventArgs e)
{
if (changing)
return;
if (e.Item == nonSelectableListItem)
{
changing = true;
nonSelectableListItem.Selected = false;
changing = false;
}
}
Sample:

Well, an easy solution would be to keep a flag saying that you are programmatically changing the selection and to allow the event to pass, and reset the flag when you're done
Edit: if you, and only you, can change the selection, and you do this programmatically, so you have control over where and when this happens, why do you even need the EventHandler? Why not call a method to do whatever processing you want to happen?

One dirty way to do that is to keep list of selected items and refresh selection every time it changes other way than from your code.
There is also an ItemSelectionChanged event which is raised separately for every item whose selection state have changed. You can probably flip the selection state back it this event.
You may also take a look on Better ListView Express control. It have a read-only mode, so that user cannot change the selection. Its setup is very simple:
listView.ReadOnly = true;
The full version also supports custom non-selectable items. Simply setting:
listView.Items[0].Selectable = false;
make the first non-selectable (by the user).
You can still select items from code, of course.
The following image shows non-selectable items in action (they are marked by gray color):

How can I in Silverlight determine if it is the user that changed a ComboBox?

In the ComboBox.SelectionChanged event I want to know who changed the ComboBox value, the user or some other code.
At first I checked if cmbBox.IsDropDownOpen is true. But this is false if the user changed the ComboBox with the keyboard.
Then I thought to check if it focused. Silverlight ComboBox doesn't have a IsFocused property so I saved the state in the cmbBoxGotFocus and cmbBoxLostFocus event handlers:
private bool cmbBox_isFocused = false;
private void cmbBox_GotFocus(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
cmbSalesPerson_isFocused = true;
}
private void cmbBox_LostFocus(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
cmbSalesPerson_isFocused = false;
}
Unfortunately this doesn't work either because there is some strange behaviour I don't understand: when the user clicks on the ComboBox the 2 events are fired one after the other so the bool remains false.

If you're using the Model-View-ViewModel pattern (which is the de-facto standard for WPF and Silverlight apps, and for good reason), then this should be trivial: when the combobox's value is changed, Silverlight will set your ViewModel's property automatically. You can put logic in your property setter to react to the change however you need to.

The appropriate event to use to determine in the ComboBox value has changed is the SelectionChanged event. However this event can also fire when ItemsSource is assigned so its not an absolute guide to change by the user but its very close.
One approach would be to assign an event handler to SelectionChanged in the user control load event or at some other point where you know the ItemsSource has be assigned.

Did you try using the xxxCombo_DropDownClosed event?

I think I didn't make the question clear : I wanted to make the distinction between the user and code. I hope I clarified this with the last edit.
I guess there is no easy way to do this. My solution was to set some flag from the code that changed the ComboBox value. This was easy since it was my code :).

Why would my child controls be uninitialized at the time of event attachment?

I have a page and a user control — we'll call them Detail.aspx and Selector.ascx.
Let's say the page shows the details of individual records in a database. The user control basically consists of a DropDownList control and some associated HTML. The DropDownList displays a list of other records to switch to at any time.
When the DropDownList fires its SelectedIndexChanged event, I'd like the parent page, Detail.aspx in this case, to handle it. After all, he'll need to know what was selected so that he can appropriately change the URL and the details shown, etc.
To do that, I've done what I usually do, which is also what the top answer says to do in this StackOverflow question:
public event EventHandler DropDownSelectedIndexChanged
{
add
{
MyDropDownList.SelectedIndexChanged += value;
}
remove
{
MyDropDownList.SelectedIndexChanged -= value;
}
}
The above code appears in the Selector.ascx.cs codebehind file.
As a result, on Detail.aspx, I can use it like so:
<cc1:RecordSelector ID="RecordSelector1" runat="server"
OnDropDownSelectedIndexChanged="RecordSelector1_DropDownSelectedIndexChanged" />
So far nothing fancy or surprising.
Here is my problem:
This causes a NullReferenceException when the browser hits Detail.aspx.
Debugging the problem shows that when the page is first hit, the public event I've shown above tries to add the event, but MyDropDownList is null, thus throwing the exception. From what I can tell, the events are added (or attempted to be added) before the Selector user control's Load event fires and thus also before the DropDownList's Load event fires.
Curiously, if I omit the OnDropDownSelectedIndexChanged attribute from Detail.aspx and instead put the following in the Page_Load event in Detail.aspx.cs:
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
RecordSelector1.DropDownSelectedIndexChanged += new EventHandler(RecordSelector1_DropDownSelectedIndexChanged);
}
It works exactly as expected. The events are attached and handled just fine. No problems.
But this means several bad things:
I have to remember not to use the designer to add said event onto my user control
I have to remember not to add the event via attributes when working in source view
Worst of all, as the control's author I need to make sure everybody else using my control knows 1 and 2
So what am I doing wrong? Every example I've seen thus far shows similar usage of exposing child controls' events through a user control.

The reason this works:
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
RecordSelector1.DropDownSelectedIndexChanged
+= new EventHandler(RecordSelector1_DropDownSelectedIndexChanged);
}
and this does not:
<cc1:RecordSelector ID="RecordSelector1" runat="server"
OnDropDownSelectedIndexChanged="RecordSelector1_DropDownSelectedIndexChanged" />
is because the first one adds the handler after the control has been initialized (via the page's Init). The second example gets parsed much earlier and as such the page is attempting to add the handler before the control has initialized.
Due to the nature of the page's life cycle I think you may have to live with adding the event handler in the code-behind. There will be no way to add the handler before the control is initialized because that control will always be null prior to initialization.

combobox in C# not getting populated

I have a windows forms app in C#. Platform is vS 2005.
Following is the piece of code:
namespace HostApp
{
public partial class Form1 : Form
{
private void comboBox2_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
comboBox2.Items.Add("Apples");
comboBox2.Items.Add("Oranges");
comboBox2.Items.Add("Grapefruits");
}
}
}
I run the app but the fruit names do not show up in the drop down of comboBox2. I am sure I am missing some line of code to "populate" the drop down with the entered values.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Viren

You add the items in the handler for the SelectedIndexChanged event. You need to move the code to InitializeComponent or another appropriate place.

Please check the following things:
You have added AutoPostBack="true" in the combo-box so that the selectedChange event is fired and post back happens.
Make sure you have nothung in ur Page load which refreshed the combo box. You can use IsPostBack to acheive loading of the values.

Your items are being added when the selected item is changed, but as there are no existing items this will never happen. Move those lines to the constructor for Form1 and it'll work.

The code you provided will only add items to comboBox2 when the selection changes in the control that is hooked up to comboBox2_SelectedIndexChanged.
There are two concepts at play here: Control Initialization/Databinding, and event handling.
The code you have written essentially says "If somebody selects something new in the combo box, add these 3 options to the combo box". That would happen every time the selected index changes in the combo box. This, of course, assumes you have even hooked up this event handler to the combo box to begin with. This is event handling.
What you are probably trying to do is initialize the control. This happens when you load the page and want to setup the initial options available in your page controls. Using the Init or Load event is probably where you want to setup the choices in your control. This is also when you would initialize your event handlers to say "When something happens, do this".

Move the code to the Page_Load event ...
The SelectedIndexChanged only fires when the ComboBox index has changed AND AutoPostBack = True.
EDIT: Sorry, it's a Form, I was thinking web ... move to Form_Load

For people having difficulties with autopostback and viewstate, beware of the page_load event.
If have been getting on this page alot when trying to google, so that's the reason i'll post it here.
If you fill your dropdownlist (or any other control) in the page_load method, be sure to write an extra control is there is a postback (triggered when changing value of a dropdownlist).
If you don't make that control, your controls will be refilled.
That mistake took me a while to figure out.
So what i'm saying is
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (!IsPostBack)
{
//fill your controls here
}
}

DropDownList.SelectedValue changes (as a child control in a FormView) aren't sticking

Okay, I have a FormView with a couple of child controls in an InsertItemTemplate. One of them is a DropDownList, called DdlAssigned. I reference it in the Page's OnLoad method like so:
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
((DropDownList)FrmAdd.FindControl("DdlAssigned")).SelectedValue =
((Guid)Membership.GetUser().ProviderUserKey).ToString();
}
Basically I'm just setting the default value of the DropDownList to the user currently logged in.
Anyway, when the page finishes loading the SelectedValue change isn't reflected on the page. I stepped through OnLoad and I can see the change reflected in my Watch list, but when all is said and done nothing's different on the page.

I figured it out. I'm still missing exactly why it doesn't work just on FormLoad, but performing the change in the FormView's DataBound event does the trick.
protected void FrmAdd_DataBound(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
// This is the same code as before, but done in the FormView's DataBound event.
((DropDownList)FrmAdd.Row.FindControl("DdlAssigned")).SelectedValue =
((Guid)Membership.GetUser().ProviderUserKey).ToString();
}
So, I guess the general rule of thumb is that if you are having problems making changes to controls when working with databinding, try to make them immediately after it has been bound.

I had a problem with dropdownlists and making the first value say something like, "Please select a value..." but without making it an actual selectable item, nor show up on the dropdownlist. I was binding the ddl in the page_load and I have to make sure that I set the text of the dropdownlist, AFTER it's been bound with data. You've accomplished the same thing by adding it to your databound section.