WPF listbox copy to clipboard

Question

I am trying to copy a standard WPF ListBox selected Item (displayed) text to clipboard on CTRL+C. Is there any simple way to achieve this. If it is something that works for all the listboxes in the app.

Answer 1

As you're in WPF so you could try the attached behaviours
First you need a class like this:

public static class ListBoxBehaviour
{
    public static readonly DependencyProperty AutoCopyProperty = DependencyProperty.RegisterAttached("AutoCopy",
        typeof(bool), typeof(ListBoxBehaviour), new UIPropertyMetadata(AutoCopyChanged));

    public static bool GetAutoCopy(DependencyObject obj_)
    {
        return (bool) obj_.GetValue(AutoCopyProperty);
    }

    public static void SetAutoCopy(DependencyObject obj_, bool value_)
    {
        obj_.SetValue(AutoCopyProperty, value_);
    }

    private static void AutoCopyChanged(DependencyObject obj_, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e_)
    {
        var listBox = obj_ as ListBox;
        if (listBox != null)
        {
            if ((bool)e_.NewValue)
            {
                ExecutedRoutedEventHandler handler =
                    (sender_, arg_) =>
                    {
                        if (listBox.SelectedItem != null)
                        {
                            //Copy what ever your want here
                            Clipboard.SetDataObject(listBox.SelectedItem.ToString());
                        }
                    };

                var command = new RoutedCommand("Copy", typeof (ListBox));
                command.InputGestures.Add(new KeyGesture(Key.C, ModifierKeys.Control, "Copy"));
                listBox.CommandBindings.Add(new CommandBinding(command, handler));
            }
        }
    }
}

Then you have the XAML like this

<ListBox sample:ListBoxBehaviour.AutoCopy="True">
  <ListBox.Items>
    <ListBoxItem Content="a"/>
    <ListBoxItem Content="b"/>
  </ListBox.Items>
</ListBox>

Updates: For the simplest case, you can access the text in the below way:

private static string GetListBoxItemText(ListBox listBox_, object item_)
{
  var listBoxItem = listBox_.ItemContainerGenerator.ContainerFromItem(item_)
                    as ListBoxItem;
  if (listBoxItem != null)
  {
    var textBlock = FindChild<TextBlock>(listBoxItem);
    if (textBlock != null)
    {
      return textBlock.Text;
    }
  }
  return null;
}

GetListBoxItemText(myListbox, myListbox.SelectedItem)
FindChild<T> is a function to find a child of type T of a DependencyObject

But just like the ListBoxItem could be bound to object, the ItemTemplate could be different as well, so you can't rely on it in real projects.