I often need to traverse a multi-band grid to do various things. Many times I need to refer to the parent row but only if that row is not a GroupBy row. In that case I need to refer to .ParentRow.ParentRow. So, what I usually do is something like:

if (row.IsGroupByRow)

   DoSomethingWith(row.ParentRow.ParentRow);

else

  DoSomethingWith(row.ParentRow);

Although a big clunky, it works. There are some cases, however, when this approach won't work such as when I'm selecting the rows with a lambda expression such as:

var MyStuff = from UltraGridRow row in MyGrid.DisplayLayout.Bands["MyBand"].GetRowEnumerator(GridRowType.DataRow)

where <some filter>

select MyStuff

{

   row.Cells["MyCell 0"].Value.ToString();

   row.ParentRow.Cells["SomeCell"].Value.ToString();

}

Now, if that ParentRow is a GroupBy, then it won't work. It can be overcome using the ? : operator but again, it's clunky.

The feature I'd like to see, if it doesn't already exist, is a property on the row called ParentDataRow which would return the first parent row that is not a GroupBy Row.

I've created an extension method which accomplishes this.

    public static class UltraGridRowEx
    {
        public static UltraGridRow ParentDataRow(this UltraGridRow row)
        {
            if (row.ParentRow.IsGroupByRow)
                return ParentDataRow(row.ParentRow);
            else
                return row.ParentRow;
        }
    }

It would be nice, however, if it were built in.