In an attempt to provide a total summary column in a WPF data grid, I attempted to bind a read only column of a DataTable to a DataGridTextColumn of the WPFToolkit data grid.

Initially, I tried to do the way I’ve been doing every other column.

<wpfToolkit:DataGridTextColumn
     Header="Total"
     DataFieldBinding="{Binding Total}"  />

Unfortunately that gives us the following error:

A TwoWay or OneWayToSource binding cannot work on the read-only property ‘Total’ of type ‘System.Data.DataRowView’.

OK, that makes sense, we should just adjust the mode of the binding and try again.

<wpfToolkit:DataGridTextColumn
     Header="Total"
     DataFieldBinding="{Binding Total,Mode=OneWay}"  />

….but we get the same error. After a few quick Google searches, I found someone else that already pointed out the issue and a possible workaround.

ReadOnly columns is missing from the CTP, but that is not a huge problem, you can easily accomplish ReadOnly behavior by using DataGridTemplateColumns and replacing the templates with read-only controls ( like TextBlocks).

A quick change of the column to a DataGridTemplateColumn and it looks like we are off to the races.

<wpfToolkit:DataGridTemplateColumn Header="Brand">
    <wpfToolkit:DataGridTemplateColumn.CellTemplate>
        <DataTemplate>
            <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=Brand,Mode=OneWay}" />
        </DataTemplate>
    </wpfToolkit:DataGridTemplateColumn.CellTemplate>
</wpfToolkit:DataGridTemplateColumn>

NOTE: After another bit of searching on the web, the WPF Toolkit – October 2008 was released last week. This negates the need for the workaround for read only columns.

<wpfToolkit:DataGridTextColumn
     Header="Total"
     Binding="{Binding Total}"
     IsReadOnly="True" />