WPF: Expand TextBox by available width but NOT by its content

stretchtextboxwidthwpf

I need a good solution for making a TextBox in a grid to expand to its available space but not expand according to how long the text in it happen to be.

Most solutions I have found is to make a dummy-border and bind to its ActualWidth but its a to hacky solution for me. The border-solution needs a small margin set on the border as well which is not nice at all. Setting it to low will cause the UI to behave very strange. Don't like this solution. There has to be a better one? All I want is for the textbox to not expand with its content. It shouldnt be that hard. Please let me know how to do this.

EDIT:

One odd thing I noticed is that the following code makes the border a lot larger then it has to be:

<Grid>
  <Border Name="dummy1" Background="Red" />
  <TextBox Text="23242342343555554234234444444444423423423432344444444" Width="{Binding ActualWidth, ElementName=dummy1}" />
</Grid>

Replacing the border and textbox order makes the border fit to the textbox nicely, but what I need is the opposite. As said before, setting a Margin (on the border) to at least 0.5 makes it work but with a bit twitchy UI as a result.

Best Answer

I used DockPanel to expand to its available space. You must set Margin too:

<DockPanel>
   <TextBox Width="{Binding RelativeSource={RelativeSource FindAncestor, AncestorType=DockPanel}, Path=ActualWidth}" Margin="1" />
</DockPanel>

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.net – How to automatically select all text on focus in WPF TextBox

We have it so the first click selects all, and another click goes to cursor (our application is designed for use on tablets with pens).

You might find it useful.

public class ClickSelectTextBox : TextBox
{
    public ClickSelectTextBox()
    {
        AddHandler(PreviewMouseLeftButtonDownEvent, 
          new MouseButtonEventHandler(SelectivelyIgnoreMouseButton), true);
        AddHandler(GotKeyboardFocusEvent, 
          new RoutedEventHandler(SelectAllText), true);
        AddHandler(MouseDoubleClickEvent, 
          new RoutedEventHandler(SelectAllText), true);
    }

    private static void SelectivelyIgnoreMouseButton(object sender, 
                                                     MouseButtonEventArgs e)
    {
        // Find the TextBox
        DependencyObject parent = e.OriginalSource as UIElement;
        while (parent != null && !(parent is TextBox))
            parent = VisualTreeHelper.GetParent(parent);

        if (parent != null)
        {
            var textBox = (TextBox)parent;
            if (!textBox.IsKeyboardFocusWithin)
            {
                // If the text box is not yet focussed, give it the focus and
                // stop further processing of this click event.
                textBox.Focus();
                e.Handled = true;
            }
        }
    }

    private static void SelectAllText(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
    {
        var textBox = e.OriginalSource as TextBox;
        if (textBox != null)
            textBox.SelectAll();
    }
}

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