Question
How do I make a ListBox refresh its item text?
I'm making an example for someone who hasn't yet realized that controls like ListBox
don't have to contain strings; he had been storing formatted strings and jumping through complicated parsing hoops to get the data back out of the ListBox
and I'd like to show him there's a better way.
I noticed that if I have an object stored in the ListBox
then update a value that affects ToString
, the ListBox
does not update itself. I've tried calling Refresh
and Update
on the control, but neither works. Here's the code of the example I'm using, it requires you to drag a listbox and a button onto the form:
Public Class Form1
Protected Overrides Sub OnLoad(ByVal e As System.EventArgs)
MyBase.OnLoad(e)
For i As Integer = 1 To 3
Dim tempInfo As New NumberInfo()
tempInfo.Count = i
tempInfo.Number = i * 100
ListBox1.Items.Add(tempInfo)
Next
End Sub
Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
For Each objItem As Object In ListBox1.Items
Dim info As NumberInfo = DirectCast(objItem, NumberInfo)
info.Count += 1
Next
End Sub
End Class
Public Class NumberInfo
Public Count As Integer
Public Number As Integer
Public Overrides Function ToString() As String
Return String.Format("{0}, {1}", Count, Number)
End Function
End Class
I thought that perhaps the problem was using fields and tried implementing INotifyPropertyChanged, but this had no effect. (The reason I'm using fields is because it's an example and I don't feel like adding a few dozen lines that have nothing to do with the topic I'm demonstrating.)
Honestly I've never tried updating items in place like this before; in the past I've always been adding/removing items, not editing them. So I've never noticed that I don't know how to make this work.
So what am I missing?