Dynamic tablelayout in winforms

Question

I'm stuck with a winform challange. Im trying to make a pretty simple layout, yet I fail to find the good and dynamic solution.

Thing is: I would like to make a layout where we have a label, followed by 1 to n buttons. In case the buttons goes out of form (right side) the buttons should form themself on a new line. After the last button, on a new line, the layout could repeat.

In case the amount of controls exceed the height of the form, I expect the layout to make a vertical scrollbar.

My latest approach is to have a TableLayoutPanel with two columns, column 0 should have the label, column 1 should have a FlowLayoutPanel. But now matter how a set the properties the layout fails to work as expected.

Trying to illustrate here:

|  Label1  |  Button1 Button2 Button3 Button4 Button5  |
|          |  Button6                                  |
--------------------------------------------------------
|  Label2  |  Button1 Button2 Button3 Button4 Button5  |

and so forth.

(needless to say the amount of rows and buttons are depending underlying data, and the controls will be generated programmatic.

Can anyone giveme a hint?

Answer 1

I managed to get your desired behaviour with the method mentioned in your last approach:

1. Create an TableLayoutPanel
2. Set AutoScroll Property to true
3. Add 2 Columns to the TableLayoutPanel
4. Set the SizeType Property to AutoSize for both Columns (or atleast the last Column)
5. Set the SizeType Property of the deafult Row to AutoSize

6. Add rows to the TableLayoutPanel:

       void AddRow(string labelText, Button[] buttons)
       {
       RowStyle temp = tableLayoutPanel.RowStyles[tableLayoutPanel.RowCount - 1]; //deafult row style
       tableLayoutPanel.RowCount++;
       tableLayoutPanel.RowStyles.Insert(tableLayoutPanel.RowCount - 2, new RowStyle(temp.SizeType, temp.Height)); //insert infront of the default row
   
       FlowLayoutPanel flowPanel = new FlowLayoutPanel()
       {
           AutoSize = true,
           AutoSizeMode = AutoSizeMode.GrowAndShrink,
           Dock = DockStyle.Fill
       };
       flowPanel.Controls.AddRange(buttons); //Add the buttons to the flowpanel
   
       Label label = new Label()
       {
           Text = labelText,
           Dock = DockStyle.Fill 
       };
   
       //Insert the controls to the tableLayout
       tableLayoutPanel.Controls.Add(label, 0, tableLayoutPanel.RowCount - 2);
       tableLayoutPanel.Controls.Add(flowPanel, 1, tableLayoutPanel.RowCount - 2);
   
       }