I need to build a custom items control in WPF, where the user can drag/drop the items. Normally I would just maintain a list of view models and use a data template to define how the items should be displayed (in this case, a button). But I am concerned that this will make the drag/drop difficult as the ItemsSource objects will be view model objects , not the actual button.
My other potential approach is when an object is added to the ItemsSource, create a button in c# and add it manually, that way I can access the button directly to do drag/drop.
What would your advice be?
I have solved my issue. I found a way to get the control being render from the data template
Related
I'm developing a WPF C# app where I have a tree view control and if the user clicks on a node in the tree, a node-specific detail 'form' appears in a named Grid somewhere else in the form. If you click on a different node in the tree, the displayed detail form checks if the contents are saved, is dismissed, and a new detail form appears in it's place.
What I need is some starting advice. Can I still implement the forms as standalone xaml, then put some some of 'container' in the grid that I throw the form into as a child? Or just add the form as a grid child somehow. How do I programmatically load the form I want in the grid and communicate with it?
Thanks for any assistance!
Corey.
Use an event aggregator design pattern, see here for details:
http://martinfowler.com/eaaDev/EventAggregator.html
You can then have some other code which listens for the node change clicks via the event aggregator and response accordingly. This will decouple your code and make it more testable.
Am assuming you are using mvvm?
If not read up on it - will make it easier.
then you have your form with the treeview on it, bound to its itemsource on the view model.
Usually an items control like a treeview will have a selecteditem property on it.
Bind that to a property on your viewmodel which is of the type of objects contained in your treeview. Call this for example CurrentlySelectedItem.
Your details 'form' can be a control or whatever you want on the same form.
Now depending on how complete your object is - you have at least two options. If your object in the treeview has all the data you need already, then just bind the details to CurrentlySelectedItem.
Obviously it must implement INotifyPropertyChanged to tell the binding system to update the values.
If the object doesn't have enough info, then on the setter of CurrentlySelectedItem you can then fire a method to load the full object and then bind the details to that full object.
Alternativley, another popular approach, you could have the details form as a self contained control that subscribes to a message and when it recieves the message with the key of the treeview object, it loads the required info.
I have a user control on a page and I'd like to load another custom user control within it's grid. However I want the user control type to be dynamic - e.g selecting "Calculator" from a drop down list would display my custom calculator control and selecting "Currency Converter" would load my currency converter. Can anybody help?
By the way I am trying to stick to MVVM.
Thanks in advance.
One way is to define multiple DataTemplates one for each child. As user selects the option set the corresponding ViewModel to a ContentControl's DataContext present in parent view and framework will pick the corresponding view for you.
John Papa has written a great blog post on exactly how to do this here.
The basic strategy is to instantiate a new instance of a class that derives from UserControl once selected from the drop down.
In other words, the SelectionChanged event of the drop down list could be handled and a new UserControl object created based on the selected item.
I have an mvvm application...I need to have an editable listview.
I am binding my observable collection to listview.
How could I track changes of the values in listview ?...I mean if user edit an item...I need to have changed values in my observable collection.
If I use datagrid in WPFToolKit, is it easy ?
In a word, yes.
Take a look at data templates in WPF. They allow you to define how you want each item in your list (or any control) to appear and behave. So each item in your listview can one or more editable controls that are bound to each item in your collection (in this case an ObservableCollection). As you change data in the listview, the bound objects will in your collection will be updated in real time.
This is also possible with a datagrid.
Have a look at this link
http://www.switchonthecode.com/tutorials/wpf-tutorial-using-the-listview-part-3-in-place-edit
It is recommended you to use the Datagrid.It already provides the edit mode functionality. You can use a TemplateColumn to provide editing views.
if you have an editable Collection in your viewmodel, just take a datagrid(editable stuff built in). you can create styles or use templates so that the datagrid look the way you want.
If I use datagrid in WPFToolKit, is it easy ?
yes ;) but if you can, use the .net4 datagrid
Well I'm designing a Custom WPF control - fore the sake of learning - that display logs message in a similar way Visual Studio does. I want to allow the user add messages by adding message istances to an Items collection, or by binding to an ItemSource. I think this is a well established pattern in many wpf controls, but I have no Idea on how achieve it. I know I can obtain the same result by adding a listview as a part of my control, but the project goal is learning, so I prefer avoid that solution. Any idea ?
Have a read around the ItemsControl, your custom control can inherit from an ItemsControl, or a derivative of it. If you create an ObservableCollection containing your items and bind that to your ItemsSource, then your list will be automatically updated. You can style the ItemTemplate and Template to give the list a different look and feel.
There's loads of info here
I've got a list of things that I want the user to easily edit the order of. Right now I'm binding them to a ListBox with a custom ItemTemplate. Within that template I have an UP & DOWN button. My goal was to move the item up/down based on the button clicked.
However I'm having trouble associating the button's click event with the actual item in the list. I've seen some folks setup a drag/drop for ordering items but that that would be too complex for this app (it's target user base =1, just me).
I assume this is possible with a ListBox. Maybe someone has a beter idea on how to implement this? It's not a huge set of data... less than 25 items.
The DataContext of the button (of the entire template, thus inherited by the button) is the item itself. Simply cast it to your desired type.