RadTreeView and XML Datasource with TAG values.

Hello James,

I will get straight to your questions using as an example the documentation article that you have pointed. I will paste the xml and radTreeView setup from the documentation. 

In this example we use the following xml:

    <Toc>
      <Node>
        <Title>Main Title</Title>
        <id>1</id>
        <parentId></parentId>
      </Node>
      <Node>
        <Title>Child Title</Title>
        <id>2</id>
        <parentId>1</parentId>
      </Node>
    </Toc>

And we have the following RadTreeView setup.

DataSet tocDataSet = new DataSet("Toc");
tocDataSet.ReadXml("TreeView\\DataBinding\\toc.xml");
this.radTreeView1.DataMember = "Node";
this.radTreeView1.DisplayMember = "Title";
this.radTreeView1.ChildMember = "id";
this.radTreeView1.ParentMember = "parentId";
this.radTreeView1.DataSource = tocDataSet;

Using this example, I will start by addressing how the XML elements are mapped to the radTreeView data fields.

XML "Title" element maps to the RadTreeView.DisplayMember field, not to DataMember. DisplayMember is the field that populates the Text property of each node.  I will address all XML elements from this example and their mapping to radTreeView data fields below:

You asked about the following RadTreeNode properties and the difference in their values: Name, Tag, Text, Value.

Name - Gets or sets the name of the RadTreeNode. 
Text - Gets or sets the text to be used as label text. As mentioned above, this value represents the DisplayMember.
Note that you can access a specific Node by Name or Text.

Tag - Gets or sets the tag object that can be used to store user data, corresponding to the tree node.
Value - Gets or sets the node value. This value represents the ValueMember.

I would like to note that Tag field is general for all TPF controls. It is not specific to the RadTreeView dataBinding. Tag is of type Object and it allows you to store any type of data that you need. In the case of a RadTreeNode your approach to populate it programmatically is correct. You cannot populate data inside it via the XML itself.

However, it is important to note what kind of information you want to store for the different RadTreeView nodes. If you want to populate text data from your XML you can use a different approach from the Tag. In the case of dabinding to XML your ValueMember field is populated with the same data as Text and Name. However, you can Map this field to a specific XML element.

For example, you can add xml element <info>: 

<info>Some info text 1.</info>	

this.radTreeView1.ValueMember = "info"; 

Doing so will allow you to store text data for different nodes that can later be accessed via the Value property. 

If this approach suits your scenario, please note that you will have to set TreeViewElement.EditMode property to Text.

this.radTreeView1.TreeViewElement.EditMode = TreeNodeEditMode.Text;

This will ensure that when you perform a Node edit, only the Text will be edited and the Value will remain the same. 

Just a side note, EditMode property has the following values:

Value: When the user performs edit, the Value will be edited.
Text: When the user performs edit, the Text will be edited.
TextAndValue (by default): When the user performs edit, both the Text and the Value will be changed.

You can find more information in this article.

I hope you find this information useful.

Regards,
Dimitar
Progress Telerik