Binding to a TreeView

TreeView binding expects your source to have an IEnumerable property with a name that matches a TreeView control on your form. Suppose you have a model and a form like so:

public class Post
{
    public string Title { get; set; }
    public string Author { get; set; }
    public List<Comment> Comments { get; set; }
}

public class Comment
{
    public string Author { get; set; }
    public string Body { get; set; }
    public List<Comment> Comments { get; set; }
    public override string ToString()
    {
        return string.Format("{0}: {1}", Author, Body);
    }
}

partial class MyForm
{
  //...ommited
  private void InitializeComponent()
        {
            this.Comments = new System.Windows.Forms.TreeView();
            this.Comments.Name = "Comments";
            this.Controls.Add(this.Comments);            
        }
  internal System.Windows.Forms.TreeView Comments;
  //...ommited
}

When you attempt to bind the Post model to the form it will find a matching TreeView and IEnumerable<T> based on name. It will then create a TreeNode for each T with the Text set to T.ToString() and Tag set to T. It will also look to see if T has an IEnumerable<T> property by the same name. If it does it will create child TreeNodes for each of those recursively.

Using our example model and form:

var post = new Post();
var comment1 = new Comment("Tom", "I love this post!");
var replyToComment1 = new Comment("Jim", "Tom, I know right!");
replyToComment1.Comments.Add(new Comment("John", "You guys are easily amused."));
comment1.Comments.Add(replyToComment1);
var comment2 = new Comment("Sam", "This post is lol.");
comment2.Comments.Add(new Comment("Amy", "Sam your face is lol!"));
post.Comments.AddRange(new[] { comment1, comment2 });

var binda = new Binder();
binda.Bind(post, myForm);

Your TreeView will look like

TreeView.Nodes
             |
             TreeNode {"Tom: I love this post!"}
                    |
                    TreeNode {"Jim: Tom, I know right!"}
                           |
                           TreeNode {"John: You guys are easily amused."}
             TreeNode {"Sam: This post is lol."}
                    |
                    TreeNode {"Amy: Sam your face is lol!"}

Binda also conveniently sets the Tag property of each TreeNode to the Comment it represents.

When reverse binding the form to the model it will use the Tag property of each TreeNode to recreate the model.