WinForms ListView DoubleClick Event for Empty Lists

The WinForms ListView control fires double click events only if the user clicked on a selected item. This is also documented on the MSDN site: “The mouse pointer must be over a child object (TreeNode or ListViewItem).” (Control.DoubleClick Event).

Sometimes it is useful to perform actions on double click events for empty ListView controls, too.

To achieve this you have to implement a custom ListView control which inherits from the original WinForms ListView control:

using System;
using System.Security.Permissions;
using System.Windows.Forms;

internal class CustomListView : ListView
{
    private const int WM_LBUTTONDBLCLK = 515;

    private bool doubleClickFired;

    protected override void OnDoubleClick(EventArgs e)
    {
        base.OnDoubleClick(e);

        this.doubleClickFired = true;
    }

    [SecurityPermission(SecurityAction.LinkDemand, Flags = SecurityPermissionFlag.UnmanagedCode)]
    protected override void WndProc(ref Message m)
    {
        this.doubleClickFired = false;

        base.WndProc(ref m);

        if (m.Msg == WM_LBUTTONDBLCLK && !this.doubleClickFired)
        {
            this.OnDoubleClick(EventArgs.Empty);
        }
    }
}

This custom control checks whether a double click event was triggered for double clicks of the left mouse button on the control. If this is not the case, it triggers a double click event “manually”.