DataGrid enhancement idea

Radzen.Blazor Components
1

Hey, just an idea, suggestion, question, take you as you will...

Would it be possible to improve RadzenDataGridColumn and generate it's Title attribute from model properties' DisplayAttribute? I would think this would not be that difficult for properties of the core model class but i'm not sure if it's difficult or even doable for nested classes inside of the model. The way I'm doing it right now:

Models:

public record TestDTO : DTO<int>
{
	[Display(ResourceType = typeof(CommonRes), Description = nameof(CommonRes.Name))]
	public string? Name { get; set; }

	public GPSCoordsDTO Coords { get; set; } = new();
}

public record GPSCoordsDTO
{
	[Display(ResourceType = typeof(CommonRes), Description = nameof(CommonRes.Latitude))]
	public decimal Latitude { get; set; }

	[Display(ResourceType = typeof(CommonRes), Description = nameof(CommonRes.Longitude))]
	public decimal Longitude { get; set; }
}

Utility methods:

public static string? NameOfFull<T>(Expression<Func<T, object>> expression, char separator = '.')
{
	ArgumentNullException.ThrowIfNull(expression);

	MemberExpression? memberExpression = expression.Body as MemberExpression;
	if(memberExpression is null)
	{
		UnaryExpression? unaryExpression = expression.Body as UnaryExpression;
		if(unaryExpression is not null && unaryExpression.NodeType == ExpressionType.Convert)
			memberExpression = unaryExpression.Operand as MemberExpression;
	}

	string? property = memberExpression?.ToString();
	return property?[(property.IndexOf(separator) + 1)..];
}

public static string Display<T>(string propertyName)
{
	ArgumentException.ThrowIfNullOrEmpty(propertyName, nameof(propertyName));

	DisplayAttribute[] displayAttributes = (DisplayAttribute[])typeof(T)
		.GetProperty(propertyName)!
		.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(DisplayAttribute), false);

	if(displayAttributes.Length > 0)
	{
		if(displayAttributes[0].ResourceType is null)
			return displayAttributes[0].Description!;
		else return new ResourceManager(displayAttributes[0].ResourceType!).GetString(displayAttributes[0].Description!)!;
	}
	else return propertyName;
}

Using it in the Razor components (a bit shortened for clarity):

<RadzenDataGrid>
	<Columns>
		<RadzenDataGridColumn
			TItem="Type"
			Property="@(NameOfFull<TestDTO>(x => x.Name!))"
			Title="@(Display<TestDTO>(nameof(TestDTO.Name)))"
		/>
		
		<RadzenDataGridColumn
			TItem="Type"
			Property="@(NameOfFull<TestDTO>(x => x.Coords.Latitude))"
			Title="@(Display<GPSCoordsDTO>(nameof(GPSCoordsDTO.Latitude)))"
		/>

		<RadzenDataGridColumn
			TItem="Type"
			Property="@(NameOfFull<TestDTO>(x => x.Coords.Longitude))"
			Title="@(Display<GPSCoordsDTO>(nameof(GPSCoordsDTO.Longitude)))"
		/>
	</Columns>
</RadzenDataGrid>

This works fine, but it makes me wondering, if there is a need to always manually specify title at all. If the model is decorated with display attributes if it could be generated by RadzenDataGridColumn component itself.

(The reason for having localized properties names in the model itself was initialy when i needed to automatically create exports for said model and didn't want to do another "binding" for CSV this time.)

2

In my opinion such feature is useful when the columns are auto-generated which is not supported by Radzen DataGrid component. At the moment you need to declare the columns manually and Title can be set in the same way as Property.

1 Like