Working with LayoutEngine

When you developing your custom controls sometime it requires a certain behavior or graphical representation of it child controls .

In this case you Control have a property called LayoutEngine

Example below shows you how to implement your LayoutEngine 

     public class DemoPanel : Panel

    {

        private bool m_CustomLayout = false;

        private DemoPanelLayout layoutEngine = new DemoPanelLayout();

        public DemoPanel() { }

        public bool CustomLayout

        {

            get { return m_CustomLayout; }

            set { m_CustomLayout = value; }

        }

        public override LayoutEngine LayoutEngine

        {

            get

            {

                return layoutEngine;

            }

        }

      }

Now for the custom LayoutEngine implementation

    public class DemoPanelLayout : LayoutEngine

    {

        public override bool Layout(

            object container,

            LayoutEventArgs layoutEventArgs)

        {

            Control parent = container as Control;

            if (((parent as DemoPanel).CustomLayout))

            {           

             Rectangle parentDisplayRectangle = parent.DisplayRectangle;

             Point nextControlLocation = parentDisplayRectangle.Location;

           

            foreach (Control c in parent.Controls)

            {               

                if (!c.Visible)

                {

                    continue;

                }

                if (nextControlLocation == parentDisplayRectangle.Location)

                {

                    nextControlLocation.Y += c.Margin.Top;

                    nextControlLocation.X += c.Margin.Left;

                }

              

                c.Location = nextControlLocation;

                if (!((c.Location.X + c.Width + c.Margin.Left)> (parent.Width - c.Width-c.Margin.Left)))

                {

                    nextControlLocation.Offset(c.Width+c.Margin.Left, 0 );

                }

                else

                {

                    nextControlLocation.X = parent.Left+c.Margin.Left;

                    nextControlLocation.Offset(0,c.Height+c.Margin.Top);

                }               

             }

            }

                       

            return false;

        }

    }

In example above DemoPanel's LayoutEngine will check the CustomLayout property
and order child controls as tabled view .