Extending C# Tree's
Lets say you have a TreeView or a random TreeNode, that you want to present in sorted state.
to make it REALLY easy, we just want to call a single method on either object .Sort() -
//add nodes
mytree.Sort();
this require that we extend each object like this:
public static void Sort(this TreeView tv)
{
TreeNodeCollection T = tv.Nodes.Sort();
tv.Nodes.Clear();
tv.Nodes.AddRange(T);
}
public static void Sort(this TreeNode tn)
{
TreeNodeCollection T = tn.ChildNodes.Sort();
tn.ChildNodes.Clear();
tn.ChildNodes.AddRange(T);
}
The sorting algorithm itself is ofcause a recursive descent through the nodes:
public static TreeNodeCollection Sort(this TreeNodeCollection tnc)
{
TreeNodeCollection T = new TreeNodeCollection();
while (tnc.Count > 0)
{
string comp = "";
TreeNode tmp = new TreeNode() ;
foreach (TreeNode node in tnc)
{
if (node.Text.CompareTo(comp) > 0)
{
tmp = node;
comp = node.Text;
}
}
T.AddAt(0,tmp);
tnc.Remove(tmp);
}
foreach (TreeNode sub in T)
{
sub.Sort();
}
return T;
}
The AddRange method i use, is also an extension, since these type of collections dont have such neat feature like Generics' collections
public static void AddRange(this TreeNodeCollection TNC, TreeNodeCollection Col)
{
foreach (TreeNode node in Col)
{
TNC.Add(node);
}
}
Sorting has never been easier...
Now lets look at another missing method on Trees/Nodes : Descendants - known from XPath, a method which returns all nodes descendant to the current node:
public static List<TreeNode> Descendants(this TreeNode node)
{
List<TreeNode> list = new List<TreeNode>();
list.Add(Recurse(node, list));
return list;
}
private static TreeNode Recurse(TreeNode node, List<TreeNode> list)
{
foreach (TreeNode sub in node.ChildNodes)
{
list.Add(Recurse(sub, list));
}
return node;
}