Displaying a collection of controls in Windows Forms

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You can use either of these options:

  • DataGridView (Example)
    You can use DataGridView to show multiple columns of different types, including TextBox, Label, CheckBox, ComboBox, Image, Button, Link. You also can customize appearance of the grid by custom painting or adding new custom column types.

  • UserControl
    You can create a composite control or UserControl containing any other controls which you need and use it as a row template, then you can show all rows by hosting multiple instance of that user control in a Panel or FlowLayoutPanel.

  • TableLayoutPanel (Example)
    You can use a TableLayoutPanel containing multiple columns and rows. Each cell of TableLayoutPanel can host a control.

  • DataRepeater
    You can use a DataRepeater control to create a row template and show a list of rows using that template.

Example 1 – DatGridView

If you want to use data binding and show specific controls including TextBox, Label, CheckBox, ComboBox, Image, Button, Link a row, DataGridView is great. It’s customize-able and you can add some other different column types or customize painting of the grid or benefit from wide range of useful events for validating and so on.

In following image you can see a DataGridView with RowHeaderVisible and ColumnHeaderVisible set to false to act like a List of fields without header:

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Example 2 – UserControl

If you need custom control to host more complicated controls or having more control on components or show them in a different layout than columns, you can create a UserControl hosting your components, then:

  • If you only want top-down flow, Use a Panel and add your user control to it with Dock property of control set to Top.
  • If you may want flows other than top-down Use a FlowLayoutPanel to add instances of your control to it.

Create a UserControl

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Add instances of it to your Panel or FlowLayoutPanel

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