101 Microsoft® Visual Basic® .NET Applications

Application #17. Custom Data-Binding Format Handlers

In the previous topic, you saw how to implement data binding with navigation controls. For the purpose of taking a building-block approach, the controls lacked any formatting. Instead, the .NET data-binding mechanism used reflection to get the underlying type of the Object being bound and then called its default ToString method to render the value. This topic will show you how to implement custom format handlers—methods that are essential to most databinding applications.

The sample application builds upon the previous topic. Two new controls are added so that you can learn how to handle Boolean and Null values in addition to Currency and Date values. Figure 3-7 shows a screen shot of Application ...