Varying ListViews item background color

How can I make it so that a ListViews control's ba开发者_StackOverflowckground color for items varies from item to item like in WinAmp, along with changing the column header colors?

If you look closely you can see the first item is a dark gray and the second is black and so on.

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You can set the ListViewItem.BackColor property, however this has to be done manually for each alternating line. Alternatively you could use a DataGridView which has an AlternateRowStyle property that would do this automatically - albeit you'll need to databind your rows in a collection of sorts which is a whole other topic.

For the simple case:

foreach (ListViewItem item in listView1.Items)
{
    item.BackColor = item.Index % 2 == 0 ? Color.Red : Color.Black;
}

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Handle the DrawItem event on the listbox and set the DrawMode to OwnerDrawVariable. The DrawItemEventArgs provides a BackColor property that can be set based on the index (also in the arg).

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I take it that you add rows (subitems) in a loop? If so use a loop counter to figure out which colour you want.

string[] strings = new string[]{"dild", "dingo"};
int i = 0;
foreach (var item in strings)
{
    Color color = i++ % 2 == 0 ? Color.LightBlue :  Color.LightCyan;
    ListViewItem lv = listView1.Items.Add(item);
    lv.SubItems[0].BackColor = color;
}

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private static void RepaintListView(ListView lw)
{
    var colored = false;
    foreach (ListViewItem item in lw.Items)
    {
        item.BackColor = colored ? Color.LightBlue : Color.White;
        colored = !colored;
    }
}

You can call this method after item addition. Or use it directly on add

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for (int index = 0; index <= ListView1.Items.Count; index++) 
{
    if (index % 2 == 0) 
    {
        ListView1.Items(index).BackColor = Color.LightGray;
    }

}