Using Aspose.Cells.GridDesktop in WPF Application

This article demonstrates how to use the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) Designer for Visual Studio to host a Windows Forms control such as Aspose.Cells.GridDesktop in a WPF application. We will be using Visual Studio 2015 to demonstrate the process, however, you can use any version including Visual Studio 2008 or later.

This tutorial will walk you through the process of adding Aspose.Cells.GridDesktop control to a WPF application. You need any version of the Visual Studio IDE that supports WPF development in order to try this on your side.

Create a WPF application using Visual Studio

First create a WPF application using Visual Studio IDE. Click on File » New » Project menu and select WPF Application from Templates, name the project and click OK. You can target your project to any .NET Framework higher than 2.0, however, you cannot use client profile .NET Frameworks.

Add references to required namespaces

Add the references to the following assemblies by right clicking the References from Solution Explorer window and select Add Reference menu.

• WindowsFormsIntegration assembly (WindowsFormsIntegration.dll).
• Windows Forms assembly (System.Windows.Forms.dll).
• Aspose.Cells.GridDesktop assembly (Aspose.Cells.GridDesktop.dll).

This action adds the required assemblies to the application, that is; copies the assemblies to the the Bin folder of the application.

Add references to XAML

Next, go to the XAML file and add the following namespaces and assembly references within the Windows tag.

 xmlns:wf="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Forms;assembly=System.Windows.Forms"

xmlns:gridDesktop="clr-namespace:Aspose.Cells.GridDesktop;assembly=Aspose.Cells.GridDesktop">

The final Windows tag will look similar to as shown below.

Add Aspose.Cells.GridDesktop control to XAML

Simply add the below code inside the Grid tag in XAML. The WindowsFormsHost tag is used to host Windows Forms control and gridDesktop:GridDesktop tag represents the Aspose.Cells.GridDesktop control. You can also name the control so that it can be referenced easily in the code.

 <WindowsFormsHost Loaded="FrameworkElement_OnLoaded">

    <WindowsFormsHost.Child>

        <gridDesktop:GridDesktop x:Name="grid" />

    </WindowsFormsHost.Child>

</WindowsFormsHost>

The final XAML will look as follow.

Use Aspose.Cells.GridDesktop

We can now access & use Aspose.Cells.GridDesktop control in the .cs file as any other Windows Forms applications. In order to keep the demonstration simple, we are just loading a sample spreadsheet in the Aspose.Cells.GridDesktop control and saving it back. Moreover, we have used the FrameworkElement_OnLoaded event to trigger the following statements.

Build & Run

Now, build and run the application using F5 or Start button on the Visual Studio UI.