C# WinForms populating TreeView from List<myObj>

Question

I have this structure of classes:

public class L3Message
{
    public int Number { get; set; }
    public string MessageName { get; set; }
    public string Device { get; set; }
    public string Time { get; set; }
    public string ScramblingCode { get; set; }

    public List<Parameter> Parameters { get; set; }

    public L3Message()
    {
        Parameters = new List<Parameter>();
    }
}

public class Parameter
{
    public int numOfWhitespaces { get; set; }

    public string ParameterName { get; set; }
    public string ParameterValue { get; set; }

    public Parameter Parent { get; set; }
    public List<Parameter> SubParameters { get; set; }

    public Parameter()
    {
        SubParameters = new List<Parameter>();
    }
}

So, as return type from one of my Methods I have List of L3Messages ( List<L3Message> ), and I need to map that to TreeView in WinForms (populate TreeView from that List ).

EDIT: Please notice that tree of my objects can be deeper than one level (becouse class Parameter have prop List < Parmaeter > (List of Parameter object, same structure as root parameter object)), so that means recursion or something like.

EDIT2:

Here is pic of tree, but this tree is created from text file base on whitespaces, so here is all Parameters, in my tree I need only one from List of L3Message objects.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/803/treeviewmessage.png/

EDIT3:

I'm sure that my TreeView need to be something like this:

L3Message.Number: L3Message.MessageName
+L3Message.Time
+L3Message.Device
+L3Message.ScramblingCode
+L3Message.Parameters[0]
++Parameter.ParamaeterName: Parameter.ParameterValue
++ (same as above)
L3Message.Number: L3Message.MessageName
+L3Message.Time
+L3Message.Device
+L3Message.ScramblingCode
+L3Message.Parameters[0]
++Parameter.ParamaeterName: Parameter.ParameterValue (in this occasion Value is null )
+++SubParameter.ParameterName: SubParameter.ParameterValue

Something like that

If possible, I would like to that in separate thread.

How can I achieve that?

Answer 1

Of course it is possible. Now it depends how you want your TreeView to be structured. Then you just need to create TreeNode objects and add them to the TreeView . See this small tutorial: http://www.dotnetperls.com/treeview

If you are going to do this on a different thread, you will need to update the GUI by forwarding the updates to the GUI thread using BeginInvoke :

TreeNode node = new TreeNode("node");
L3Message msg = new L3Message();
node.Tag = msg;

treeView.BeginInvoke(
    (Action)(() =>
    {
        treeView.Nodes.Add(node);
    }));

Notice that the TreeNode needs to be created with a string representing the name and then you can add the object it points to using the Tag property.

Answer 2

I managed to solve this, but I think that is not optimize and there is no separate thread. If anyone can modify my code to perform better and add separate thread?

SOLUTION:

foreach (L3Message message in por)
            {
                treeViewMessages.Nodes.Add(message.Number + ": " + message.MessageName);
                treeViewMessages.Nodes.Add("Time: " + message.Time);
                treeViewMessages.Nodes.Add("MS: " + message.Device);
                treeViewMessages.Nodes.Add("Scrambling Code: " + message.ScramblingCode);

                foreach (Parameter param in message.Parameters)
                {
                    TreeNode tnRootParam = new TreeNode();

                    //tnRootParam.Nodes.Add(param.ParameterName + ": " + param.ParameterValue);
                    if (param.SubParameters.Count != 0)
                    {
                        CreateTreeNodes(param, tnRootParam);
                        tnRootParam.Text = param.ParameterName;
                        treeViewMessages.Nodes.Add(tnRootParam);
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        tnRootParam.Text = param.ParameterName + ": " + param.ParameterValue;
                        treeViewMessages.Nodes.Add(tnRootParam);
                    }


                }
                treeViewMessages.Nodes.Add("---------------------------------------------------------------------");
            }

private void CreateTreeNodes(Parameter parameter, TreeNode tnRootParam)
    {

        if (parameter.SubParameters.Count == 0)
        {
            tnRootParam.Nodes.Add(parameter.ParameterName + ": " + parameter.ParameterValue);
        }
        else
        {
            foreach (Parameter subparam in parameter.SubParameters)
            {
                CreateTreeNodes(subparam, tnRootParam);
            }  
        }
    }