Using custom objects for (CheckedListBox).Items.Add()

Question

When I add an item to the CheckedListBox list box I also want to store a reference to another object. I tried adding a new instance of this object to the CheckedListBox.

public class CheckedListBoxExtention : CheckedListBox
{
    private ReferenceItem _referenceItem;
    public ReferenceItem storedItem
    {
        get { return _referenceItem; }
        set { _referenceItem = value; }
    }
    public CheckedListBoxExtention(ReferenceItem storedItem)
    {
        _referenceItem = storedItem;
    }
}

This works in that later when I foreach though the items in CheckedListBox I have a reference to the _referenceItem object. However, when I add items like this, CheckedListBox shows up as blank (the list in the GUI itself). So I am trying to find a way to override the item text or something like that.

---

This is the code I used to fix the problem

    class ReferenceItemWrapper
{
    private ReferenceItem _item;
    public ReferenceItemWrapper(ReferenceItem item)
    {
        _item = item;
    }
    public ReferenceItem getItem
    {get {return _item;}}
    public override string ToString()
    {
        return _item.ToString();
    }
}

I am a bit new to wrappers. Why exactly did it work after it was wrapped when it did not work when I added the ReferenceItem directly to the CheckedListBox?

Answer 1

The CheckedListBox uses the ToString method of the objects in the list to populate the captions in the box. Rather than extend the CheckedListBox, just create a wrapper class that lets you store both your reference and a caption, and implements a ToString method which returns your caption. Just create one of your wrapper objects, stick the text in it, stick your reference in it, then add the wrapper object to the list box.