如何将嵌套的设计时属性添加到用户控件？

Question

I have a user control that contains a number of panel controls. The user control has logic to set the visibility of each panel, based on the values of some variables contained in the user control.

I would like to enhance this functionality by adding the following enumeration:

public enum Visibility
{
    Default,
    Always,
    Never
}

where Default would use the current logic to set the panel's visibility, but Always would (obviously) make the panel always visible, and Never would always hide the panel.

I would also like to add a "nested" design-time property named something like PanelVisiblity that the developer could expand, and see the panel names listed below, and allow them to assign a value from the Visibility enumeration for each.

If I add properties like this:

public partial class MyControl : UserControl
{
    public Visibility ActivePanel { get; set; }
    public Visibility CodePanel { get; set; }
}

the ActivePanel and CodePanel properties appear in the Properties window in Visual Studio, and I can set them to one of the three values in the enum. However, when I refactored my code to try to create a nested property like this:

public partial class MyControl : UserControl
{
    public class PanelVisibility
    {
        public enum Visibility
        {
            Default,
            Always,
            Never
        }

        public Visibility ActivePanel { get; set; }
        public Visibility CodePanel { get; set; }
    }
}

I do not get an expandable PanelVisiblity property, I get a disabled Visiblity property, where the value is the namespace of class, plus 'PanelVisibility'.

I have Googled a number of variations in phrasing this search, but have not been able to find anything like what I'm looking for.

Any direction would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

It seems that you are looking for the same functionality as a DockPanel offers.

I'd suggest you that instead of re-inventing the wheel you should use one the available implementations to you such as :

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.controls.dockpanel.aspx

http://dockpanel2012.codeplex.com/

https://github.com/dockpanelsuite/dockpanelsuite