constrain StackPanel's width to smallest child element

Question

How can I constrain a vertical WPF StackPanel's width to the most narrow item it contains. The StackPanel's width must not be greater than the width of any other child element.

Answer 1

Unfortunately the IValueConverter approach will not always work; if the children are added to StackPanel statically, for example, the child collection will be empty at the time of binding (so I discovered). The simplest solution is to create a custom panel:

public class ConstrainedStackPanel : StackPanel
{
    public ConstrainedStackPanel()
    {
    }

    protected override Size MeasureOverride(Size constraint)
    {
        foreach (var item in this.Children)
        {
            // FrameworkElement has the Width property we care about.
            FrameworkElement element = item as FrameworkElement;
            if (element != null)
                constraint.Width = Math.Min(element.Width, constraint.Width);
        }

        return base.MeasureOverride(constraint);
    }

    protected override Size ArrangeOverride(Size arrangeSize)
    {
        foreach (var item in this.Children)
        {
            // FrameworkElement has the Width property we care about.
            FrameworkElement element = item as FrameworkElement;
            if (element != null)
                arrangeSize.Width = Math.Min(element.Width, arrangeSize.Width);
        }

        return base.ArrangeOverride(arrangeSize);
    }
}

You can use the panel as illustrated by the following XAML:

<StackPanel Margin="5">
    <TextBlock Text="StackPanel:" FontWeight="Bold" />
    <StackPanel x:Name="panelA">
        <Button Width="100" Content="100" />
        <Button Width="200" Content="200" />
        <Button Width="300" Content="300" />
        <Button Width="400" Content="400" />
    </StackPanel>
    <TextBlock Text="ConstrainedStackPanel:" FontWeight="Bold" Margin="0,10,0,0" />
    <l:ConstrainedStackPanel x:Name="panelB">
        <Button Width="100" Content="100" />
        <Button Width="200" Content="200" />
        <Button Width="300" Content="300" />
        <Button Width="400" Content="400" />
    </l:ConstrainedStackPanel>
</StackPanel>

Which will render something like the following:

I hope this helps.