How to programmatically add items to CollectionEditor's list/listbox/collection ? [modified]

Question

I have custom collection editor and I want to programmatically add items to it's list (collection) so they will could visible in a listbox. How I can do that? I know about CollectionEditor's AddItems method, but it takes collection object as a parameter, but I cannot figure out a way to get CollectionEditor's inner list object... :/

[update] Ugh.. the proper method name is 'SetItems' [/update]

[update 2] Source code of what I'm trying to do...

public class MyCollectionEditor : CollectionEditor
{
        private Type m_itemType = null;

        public MyCollectionEditor(Type type)
            : base(type)
        {
            m_itemType = type;
        }

        protected override CollectionForm CreateCollectionForm()
        {
            Button buttonLoadItem = new Button();
            buttonLoadItem.Text = "Load from DB";
            buttonLoadItem.Click += new EventHandler(ButtonLoadItem_Click);

            m_collectionForm = base.CreateCollectionForm();

            TableLayoutPanel panel1 = m_collectionForm.Controls[0] as TableLayoutPanel;
            TableLayoutPanel panel2 = panel1.Controls[1] as TableLayoutPanel;
            panel2.Controls.Add(buttonLoadItem);

            return m_collectionForm;
        }

        private void ButtonLoadItem_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            if (m_itemType.Equals(typeof(MyCustomCollection)))
            {               
                MyCustomItem item = ...load from DB...

                //definition: SetItems(object editValue, object[] value);
                SetItems( -> what goes here?! <- , new object[] { item });
            }
        }
}

[/update 2]

Answer 1

I may be misunderstanding your question but dont you have to define you own collection first ? and then decorate it with the EditorAttribute

[EditorAttribute(typeof(System.ComponentModel.Design.CollectionEditor), typeof(System.Drawing.Design.UITypeEditor))]

Answer 2

I've found solution thanks to .NET Reflector and reflection mechanism. Instead of using SetItems method I'm invoking private method of CollectionForm: private void AddItems(IList instances) , like this:

MethodInfo methodInfo = m_collectionForm.GetType().GetMethod("AddItems", BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance);
methodInfo.Invoke(m_collectionForm, new object[] { /* my items here */ });

PS. See the rest of code above...

Answer 3

Guys this is the solution that includes:
1- How to add a new button in CollectionEditor
In my case is a "Duplicate Button": insert a new instance that have the same props value as the selected one (a clone).
2- MyCollectionEditor_DuplicateClick onclik event,creates the new instance and bind it using the reflecton mechanism.
3- Decorate name
CheckLastCounter_ItemDuplicate() is just a method to save the last count of duplicated in order to decorate the name based on number order.

I hope this can help you. I added this because I didn't found nothing completed about this problem and the behaviour of controllereditor is strange when it comes to refresh or bind the values.

---

CollectionForm collectionForm;
private int counterAtomiDuplicati { get; set; }
private const string NomeItemDuplicato = "Item_Duplicato_";


protected override CollectionForm CreateCollectionForm()
{
    collectionForm = base.CreateCollectionForm();
    TableLayoutPanel tl =(TableLayoutPanel)collectionForm.Controls[0];
    AddDuplicateButton(tl);
}

private void AddDuplicateButton(TableLayoutPanel tl)
{
   var upButton = (ButtonBase)tl.Controls.Find("upButton", true).First();
   var duplicateButtonLocation = new System.Drawing.Point(upButton.Location.X, 0);
   Button duplicateButton = new Button();
   duplicateButton.Name = "duplicateButton";
   duplicateButton.Image = Resources.img1;
   duplicateButton.Location = duplicateButtonLocation;
   duplicateButton.Size = upButton.Size;
   tl.Controls.Add(duplicateButton);
   duplicateButton.Click += MyCollectionEditor_DuplicateClick;
}

private void MyCollectionEditor_DuplicateClick(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
  if (listbox == null)
      return;

  if (listbox.Items.Count == 0)
      return;

  var o = listbox.SelectedItem;
  PropertyInfo p = o.GetType().GetProperty("Value");
  if (p.GetValue(o, null) is MyObject)
  {
      MyObject selectedItem = p.GetValue(o, null) as MyObject;
      MyObject nuovoItem = selectedItem.Clone();

     CheckLastCounter_ItemDuplicate();
     counterItemDuplicati++;

     nuovoItem.FileZip = nuovoItem.Nome = nuovoItem.DisplayName = "Item_Duplicato_"+ counterItemDuplicati;

    List<MyObject> listaItemDuplicati = new List<MyObject>();
    listaItemDuplicati .Add(nuovoItem);
    var listaOggetti = listaItemDuplicati .Cast<object>().ToArray();

    //reflection mechanism
    MethodInfo methodInfo = collectionForm.GetType().GetMethod("AddItems", BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance);
    methodInfo.Invoke(collectionForm, new object[] { listaOggetti });
     }
}

private void CheckLastCounter_ItemDuplicate()
{
   PackageClass pak = (PackageClass)Context.Instance;
   var listaName = pak.MyItems.Select(x => x.Nome).Where(x =>x.Contains(NomeItemDuplicato)).ToList();
   if (listaName != null && listaName.Any())
   {
       List<int> countItemsDuplicati = new List<int>();
       foreach (string item in listaName)
         {
           string countStringa = item.Replace(NomeItemDuplicato, "");
           int valoreCount = Convert.ToInt32(countStringa);
           countItemsDuplicati.Add(valoreCount);
         }

      int countMax = countItemsDuplicati.Count();
      counterItemDuplicati = countMax;
    }
}