Storing file information for WPF TreeView (C #)
Hey there. Hopefully this question hasn't come up before - I couldn't find it in the related questions list.
Anyway, I am quite a beginner programmer (first year of training so I know about squats) and I have a game with C # and WPF right now. For fun, I'm trying to create a simple music browser - for starters, it will just read my directory and list the files, then launch it if you double click or whatever. Anyway, I am having problems with how to store TreeViewItems. I need to keep it as a hierarchical design so I can scroll or whatever and populate the Treeview as soon as I create all the paths, but I'm not sure if this is the best way to do it. Atm, I am using TreeViewItem [] [] [] - an array of arrays that contain arrays, which actually seems to be wrong thinking about it ...
thinking about it now, maybe I should create a database and populate the tree structure from this? The only problem: I've never done anything like this XD.
Thanks for any help!
-Edibles
Let's take a step back and look at the general architecture. In this case, typically the TreeView displays the data, the type of class that represents the data, and the file / database / etc. as a data warehouse.
The sample should be that you load data from file / database / etc. to the type of the custom class that represents the object. Then you bind that source to the TreeView (using WPF binding or manual binding).
Let's say you want each node in the tree to represent a music album. You would create a MusicAlbum class that could have been composed of artist name, album name, album date, SongList, etc. This data is serialized to file / database, etc. Etc.
Then you bind this data to the TreeView. WPF supports binding directly to lists of custom objects, or you can manually configure the binding. If you are new to development, you may want to consider manual binding as it is a little easier to set up and will give you good practice.
In terms of storage, I would recommend either a database (like SQLite) or an XML file. Since you are involved in development, I recommend starting with an XML file. It is a good way to represent data and does not have the same complexity overhead as a database. If you are doing this at a production level I would definitely recommend the database.
EDIT: . The question itself is a bit vague, so you can be more specific about what exactly you are asking. Do you need code examples for binding a TreeView, or do you want a tutorial or general structure?
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If you intend to use music only through an explorer-style folder structure, you don't need a database as the Windows file system already provides you with a centralized point to get your data. You want to be careful when trying to populate the entire tree at startup, though, since you don't want users to expect the application to scan the entire structure of their hard drives before they can start navigating the tree. The process of loading tree items only when they are needed is called lazy loading and is beyond the scope of the answer here. Luckily, this Code Project article shows you how to do this.
On the other hand, if you want to replicate the Windows Media Player library style where the user supplies specific directories and you create a way to navigate MP3 files by artist, album, etc., then you probably need some kind of database in the background. In these cases, you need to read tag information from mp3 files in selected folders, add the information to a well-normalized database (to allow quick searches and cross-references), and provide a user interface that allows the user to navigate that path. Once again you will be looking for lazy loading the tree - select an artist, then populate the child nodes with all their albums / songs from the database at the time of the query - but before you get there,there will be a lot more work in front of you (choose a database type, define a schema, learn how to parse mp3 tags, etc.) so I assume you meant the first option.
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