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Introduction

The Grid control is the most flexible layout panel, and supports arranging controls in multi-row and multi-column layouts. It is conceptually similar to an HTML Table element.

Grids (not to be confused with DataGrids) offer easy and exact placement by providing a table-like structure. You declare rows and columns, and then place controls into a specific row/column location (spanning across rows or columns as needed).

Fortunately, if you're coming from a Web development background, you'll find Silverlight's Grid control easy to use and quick to comprehend because it's similar to what you've already been using. It acts much like HTML's table tag and allows data and controls to be arranged in a tabular-style view.

As i write before current Silverlight Grid Layout breakes best practices of HTML and Adobe Flex Grid layouts. Current defention based approach have following disadvantages that makes xaml coding very hard:

1. It is very hard to create new row. In that case you should rewrite all Grid.Row and Grid.Columns for all rows inserted below.
2. Defenitions are static by their nature and because of it, it is impossible to use grid for dynamic forms. Currently even in toolkit DataForm Microsoft is using StackPanel. But StackPanel is not designed for multi column layout that have dataform.

In this tutorial Karl Shifflett demonstrates how to add a new row to an existing Data Entry Form.

A common task after a form is developed is inserting a new row in the form. This short walk-through will show you how to insert a new row in an existing data entry form.

For this exercise our requirement is to insert a Label and TextBox for the middle initial. This row needs to be inserted between the first and last name rows.

Using some Silverlight effects, CrocusGirl has created one very colorful animation.

The Grid container is sometimes compared to the HTML Table; but  I’d rather consider the Grid as a matrix and with this in mind, I decided to add some matrix magic to it. [...] My initial plan was to create dynamic squares in each grid cell by moving along the edges of the grid until I would reach the center.

The example demonstrates Telerik Silverlight Grid: hierarchy, asynchronous databinding, Excel-like filtering, grouping and sorting, integration with Telerik Silverlight Chart, Tab and many more.

See demo

This is something I’ve been doing since we first got LayoutRoot, and it has saved me aggravation a number of times. This works in Silverlight 2 and Silverlight 3 (the drop shadow effect in the example below only works in Silverlight 2).

Simply put: I never set column definitions, margins or anything else related to layout directly on layout root. Instead, I nest another grid inside it and work with that.

This article is sponsored by Telerik

Vladimir Enchev, a senior software engineer from Telerik team, created an example demonstrating how you can handle millions of records in milliseconds with Telerik's RadGridView for Silverlight.

The System.Windows.Controls.Grid control is one of the most commonly used containers in Silverlight. It allows you to organize its content into rows and columns as a regular grid. By default a Grid control has only one cell and everything you add goes there overlapping the previous content. In order to define multiple rows and columns to your Grid control you have to add as many <RowDefinition> and <ColumnDefinition> as you need, see the sample below.

Xaml

<Page

   xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"

   xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml">

   <Grid x:Name="MyGrid" ShowGridLines="True">

     <Grid.RowDefinitions>

       <RowDefinition></RowDefinition>

       <RowDefinition></RowDefinition>

       <RowDefinition></RowDefinition>

     </Grid.RowDefinitions>

     <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>

       <ColumnDefinition></ColumnDefinition>

       <ColumnDefinition></ColumnDefinition>

       <ColumnDefinition></ColumnDefinition>

     </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>

   </Grid>

</Page>

Grid MyGrid = new Grid();

RowDefinition row1 = new RowDefinition();

RowDefinition row2 = new RowDefinition();

RowDefinition row3 = new RowDefinition();

MyGrid.RowDefinitions.Add( row1 );

MyGrid.RowDefinitions.Add( row2 );

MyGrid.RowDefinitions.Add( row3 );

ColumnDefinition col1 = new ColumnDefinition();

ColumnDefinition col2 = new ColumnDefinition();

ColumnDefinition col3 = new ColumnDefinition();

MyGrid.ColumnDefinitions.Add( col1 );

MyGrid.ColumnDefinitions.Add( col2 );

MyGrid.ColumnDefinitions.Add( col3 );

As you can see we have added 3 rows and 3 columns definitions in our Grid control. So finally what we get is a grid with 9 cells ordered 3x3.

That's it!

Let's imagine we would like to add a button at a specific cell (row:column) in our grid control. How this could be done? How to define the row and column of that cell? Well, the answer is pretty easy - you just have to define values for the two attached properties Grid.Row and Grid.Column inside the control you wish to add. Like this:

Xaml

<Grid x:Name="MyGrid" ShowGridLines="True">

   <Grid.RowDefinitions>

      <RowDefinition></RowDefinition>

      <RowDefinition></RowDefinition>

   </Grid.RowDefinitions>

   <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>

      <ColumnDefinition></ColumnDefinition>

      <ColumnDefinition></ColumnDefinition>

   </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>

   <Button x:Name="MyButton" Content="Button at Cell(R:0, C:1)" Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="1"></Button>

</Grid>

C# 

Grid MyGrid = new Grid();

RowDefinition row1 = new RowDefinition();

RowDefinition row2 = new RowDefinition();

MyGrid.RowDefinitions.Add( row1 );

MyGrid.RowDefinitions.Add( row2 );

ColumnDefinition col1 = new ColumnDefinition();

ColumnDefinition col2 = new ColumnDefinition();

MyGrid.ColumnDefinitions.Add( col1 );

MyGrid.ColumnDefinitions.Add( col2 );

Button MyButton = new Button();

MyButton.SetValue( Grid.RowProperty, 0 );

MyButton.SetValue( Grid.ColumnProperty, 1 );

Do you see the row before the last one, the row where we add the button? OK, if you see it, then you also probably notice the two properties Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="1". Using these attached properties you actually define the exact row and column where your control should be inserted to. And last but not least, don't forget that the row and column indexes are zero based.

That's it!