Binding WPF DataGrid to DataTable using TemplateColumns

Edit: Updated to reflect the input of Aran Mulholland (see comment)

Apparently the DataGrid is passing the entire DataRowView to each cell. That’s why the binding doesn’t work. Your DataTemplate expects the DataContext to be of type MyData, but instead it is of type DataRowView. My proposed (somewhat hack-ish) workaround to get the DataContext you want is to create a custom DataGridTemplateColumn that will extract the necessary item from the DataRowView. The code is below:

<Window x:Class="DataGridTemplateColumnSample.Window1"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
    xmlns:dg="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Windows.Controls;assembly=WPFToolkit"
    Title="Window1" Height="300" Width="300">
    <Window.Resources>
        <ResourceDictionary>
            <DataTemplate x:Key="MyDataTemplate" DataType="DataRowView">
                <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal">
                    <Button Background="Green" HorizontalAlignment="Right" VerticalAlignment="Center" Margin="5,0,0,0" Content="{Binding Path=nameData}"></Button>
                    <TextBlock Background="Green" HorizontalAlignment="Center" VerticalAlignment="Center" Margin="5,0,0,0" Text="{Binding Path=nameData}"></TextBlock>
                </StackPanel>
            </DataTemplate>
        </ResourceDictionary>
    </Window.Resources>
    <Grid>
        <dg:DataGrid Grid.Row="1" AutoGenerateColumns="True" x:Name="dataGrid1" SelectionMode="Single" 
                     CanUserAddRows="False" CanUserSortColumns="true" CanUserDeleteRows="False" 
                     AlternatingRowBackground="AliceBlue"  AutoGeneratingColumn="dataGrid1_AutoGeneratingColumn"
                     ItemsSource="{Binding}" VirtualizingStackPanel.VirtualizationMode="Standard" />
    </Grid>
</Window>

---

using System.Data;
using System.Windows;
using Microsoft.Windows.Controls;

namespace DataGridTemplateColumnSample
{
    public partial class Window1
    {
        public Window1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            DataContext = GetDummyData().DefaultView;
        }

        private static DataTable GetDummyData()
        {
            var dt = new DataTable("Foo");
            dt.Columns.Add(new DataColumn("OneColumn", typeof(MyData)));
            dt.Columns.Add(new DataColumn("AnotherColumn", typeof(MyData)));
            dt.Rows.Add(new MyData("Row1C1", true), new MyData("Row1C2", true));
            dt.Rows.Add(new MyData("Row2C1", false), new MyData("Row2C2", true));
            dt.AcceptChanges();
            return dt;
        }

        private void dataGrid1_AutoGeneratingColumn(object sender, DataGridAutoGeneratingColumnEventArgs e)
        {
            var column = new DataRowColumn(e.PropertyName);
            column.Header = e.Column.Header;
            column.CellTemplate = (DataTemplate)Resources["MyDataTemplate"];
            e.Column = column;
        }
    }

    public class DataRowColumn : DataGridTemplateColumn
    {
        public DataRowColumn(string column) { ColumnName = column; }
        public string ColumnName { get; private set; }
        protected override FrameworkElement GenerateElement(DataGridCell cell, object dataItem)
        {
            var row = (DataRowView) dataItem;
            var item = row[ColumnName];
            cell.DataContext = item;
            var element = base.GenerateElement(cell, item);
            return element;
        }
    }

    public class MyData
    {
        public MyData(string name, bool data) { nameData = name; showData = data; }
        public string nameData { get; set; }
        public bool showData { get; set; }
    }
}

Note: This approach only appears to work with container virtualization off or in Standard mode. If the VirtualizationMode is set to Recycling the template is not applied.