How can I set order of PropertyGridPropertyItem?

You would need to clear/customize the PropertyGrid.SortDescriptions collection. By default, the sort descriptions put categories before properties, then sort by name. If you remove the second sort description (the one that sorts by name), then the order you define the properties would be preserved.

It helped when I clear.. How can I do it through xaml?

It is not currently possible to clear the SortDescriptions (or any collection for that matter) using XAML.

I did this (removed the second sort description) and while it's no longer sorting by name it is not sorting in the order the properties are written in the xaml. I can't determine the order as it appears to be somewhat random. For example in one PropertyGridCategoryItem I have 4 PropertyGridPropertyItems. In the xaml they are written in this order

prop 1, "Name Z", ValueTemplate
prop 2, "Name A", CheckBoxValueTemplateKey
prop 3, "Name B", CheckBoxValueTemplateKey
prop 4, "Name C", CheckBoxValueTemplateKey

Without deleting the SortDescription at runtime they are rendered like this (as expected):

prop 2, "Name A", CheckBoxValueTemplateKey
prop 3, "Name B", CheckBoxValueTemplateKey
prop 4, "Name C", CheckBoxValueTemplateKey
prop 1, "Name Z", ValueTemplate

When I delete the second SortDescription it appears like this:

prop 3, "Name B", CheckBoxValueTemplateKey
prop 4, "Name C", CheckBoxValueTemplateKey
prop 1, "Name Z", ValueTemplate
prop 2, "Name A", CheckBoxValueTemplateKey

What am I missing here?

Hi Ken,

If you can send over a small sample project to our support address, then we can take a look.

I'll try and post something tomorrow -- deadlines... Thanks for the quick response.

Sorting in .NET is not 'stable' for the framework's implementation of sort, so what you're probably seeing is the effects of sort not being stable sort. Are you using categorized values? If so, you might be best to use PropertyGridPropertyItem.Tag to specify an 'absolute' sort order and then change the sort collection to contain Category & Tag as the sort descriptions instead of Category & Name.

In case "stable sort" doesn't mean anything to you, what it basically means is this:

if you have a list with

Category Name
X X_first
X X_second
X X_third
Y Y_first
Y Y_second

and you sort only by Category, there is not guarantee what order the items within categories X and Y will come, only that all X's will appear before all Y's do.

The .NET framework's sort algorithm is like this (makes no guarantees about preserving the order), whereas a stable sort makes the guarantee that items are left in the same order they started in, if they are equal in the key columns.

Thanks Kelley. That's exactly the implementation I had actually used the day after I posted this. Sorry I guess I should have closed out the post when I discovered the workaround. I hope Actipro adds a property to the control that would either serve as the definitive sort order or provide a sort description that implements a "sort as written" order.

Hi Ken,

We are hoping to address issues like this after we get WPF Studio 5.0 out.

Hi Ken,

We are hoping to address issues like this after we get WPF Studio 5.0 out.