C# Populating a listview from a List

Question

So in my C# (WPF) application I use a form to populate a list of patients. I need these patients to show up in a listview, as they're added.

public class Patients
{
    public string lastname;
    public string firstname;
    public string rm;
    public int age;
    public string notes;
    public int  status; 

    public Patients(string lastname, string firstname, int age, string rm, string notes, int status)
    {
        this.lastname = lastname;
        this.firstname = firstname;
        this.notes = notes;
        this.status = status;
    }
}


public partial class MainWindow : Window
{

    public List<Patients> newPatientList = new List<Patients>();

    public void AddNewPatient(string lastname, string firstname, int age, string rm, string notes, int status)
    {

        newPatientList.Add(new Patients(lastname, firstname, age, rm, notes, status));
     }
}

This adds patients fine to the list.

    <ListView ItemsSource="{Binding newPatientList}" x:Name="listView" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch"  Margin="0,0,0,0" SelectionChanged="listView_SelectionChanged">
        <ListView.View>
            <GridView>
                <GridViewColumn Header="RM #" DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding rm}"/>
                <GridViewColumn Header="Last Name" DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding lastname}"/>
                <GridViewColumn Header="First Name" DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding firstname}"/>
                <GridViewColumn Header="Status"  DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding status}"/>
            </GridView>
        </ListView.View>
    </ListView>

I'm trying to bind the data to the list, but it does not populate.

Answer 1

Simply use an ObservableCollection instead of List :

public ObservableCollection<Patients> newPatientList = new ObservableCollection<Patients>();

Thre reason your control is not updating, is that List cannot tell the control that its collection has changed, leaving the control oblivious of when to update itself.

ObservableCollection will notify the control whenever its collection changes, and all items will be rendered.

Keep in mind, that changing any property of the items inside the collection still will not notify the control, but i think that is ouside the scope of this question.

Answer 2

wpf bindings require properties . Patients class declares fields .

instead of

public string lastname;

make

public string lastname { get;set; }

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also according to common naming convention it should better be

public string LastName { get;set; }

don't forget to fix bindings, they are case-sensitive

"{Binding LastName}"

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you have similar issue with newPatientList field.

public List<Patients> newPatientList = new List<Patients>();

and don't forget to set Window DataContext . Bindings look up values from DataContext. if it is null, there won't be any values displayed