How to Expand/Collapse TreeCtrl nodes by using Enter Key?

You can see Tree Control, almost in every heavy windows applications. They are very convineant method for organize things in hierarchy. But by default Tree control doesn’t support expand/collapse of its tree nodes by Enter key. Is there any way to do that?

Picture Courtesy – hawaiibonsai

Yes, you can! All you want to do is – Override PreTranslateMessage() in your dialog and handle all WM_KEYDOWN messages for your tree control. If, the key is VK_RETURN, i.e. enter key, then check whether the current selected node in TreeCtrl is expanded or collapsed and modify the key stroke as WM_ADD key or WM_SUBSTRACT key accordingly. The idea is, if you press +, then tree node expands and for – key, the tree node collapse – which is the default behavior of tree control. Well, have a look at the code snippet.

BOOL CRabbitDlg::PreTranslateMessage(MSG* pMsg)
{
    // Check whether its a keypress.
    if( pMsg->message == WM_KEYDOWN )
    {
        // Check whether its for our tree control.
        UINT CtrlId = ::GetDlgCtrlID( pMsg->hwnd );
        if( CtrlId == IDC_TREECTRL )
        {
            // Check whether its enter key.
            if( pMsg->wParam == VK_RETURN)
            {
                // Check whether the currently selected item is
                HTREEITEM CurrentItem = m_TreeCtrl.GetSelectedItem();
                if( m_TreeCtrl.GetItemState( CurrentItem, TVIS_EXPANDED )
                        & TVIS_EXPANDED )
                {
                    // Current Item is Expanded.
                    // So send - Key code to collapse it.
                    pMsg->wParam = VK_SUBTRACT;
                }
                else
                {
                    // Current Item is Collapsed.
                    // So send + Key code to Expand it.
                    pMsg->wParam = VK_ADD;
                }
            }
        }
    }

    return CDialog::PreTranslateMessage(pMsg);
}

If you want the expand entire child nodes under a particular node, then press * key. I used to use this techniqe to report performance bugs.

Targeted Audience – Intermediate.