I seek to change the default setting of a .NET Windows Forms control's property, without creating a custom control inheriting from it.
What I want is, for example, to add a TextBox on my Form that already has the TextAlign property set to HorizontalAlignment.Right instead of HorizontalAlignment.Left. Even if only solution-wide, if achievable, I would love to know. This would save a lot of time for when one is working with a LOT of controls and needs to set their properties to specific, non-default, values.
Creating a custom control is just too overkill for this, and would clutter my solution with unnecessary things. I have also considered running a regex on the designer files solution-wide (to add the non-default values to such controls), but writing regex like that can (also) be time consuming/problematic.
Any ideas?
There is a way to do that. But you need to set the binding initially. Later on you can set in one go to all the controls of your choice. This might be not your exact answer but this is how we define styles like as in WPF
(1) Click the Application Property Bindings
(2) Define Binding
(3)Now for textbox you can set the initial default
(4) Now You can set the property binding of every textbox intially or you can code which will set the application settings at starup or on form load.
This will you help to change the default propety at once later on
Related
From this document:
http://www.telerik.com/help/silverlight/radmaskedinput-features-extensions.html
I am interested in <telerik:RadMaskedNumericInput maskedInput:MaskedInputExtensions.Maximum="1000" />
But in their examples they are setting a property like MaskedInputExtensions.Maximum directly in the XAML. So if I want to use it I have to go to go to all my XAML files and set it there.
But since I have created my own control so I have both a CS source code for it and also my own XAML for the style of my control.
Is there a way I can set it in either of those places to make it more reusable?
The best way to do it is using styles.
Check this out.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/pakistan/archive/2013/03/07/xaml-how-to-style.aspx
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/180656/Styles-in-Silverlight
It means that you have a pre-defined style for every element of a certain type, so if you want to change the same property for every element of that kind you just change this specific style.
If this is not what you want you can also create a property called "Maximum" for example and bind it to your controls manually. Once you change this property it will reflect on your controls.
Hope it helps!!
I am eager to find some solid (free, Open Source, or tutorial/example) code to make a WPF Combobox do autocomlete/autofilter as the user types. But everything I've tried so far has had some sort of problem...
A Reusable WPF Autocomplete TextBox came close, but I can't get it to work with more than one filter (more info here).
WPF autocomplete textbox/combobox doesn't work for me because it inherits from UserControl, and thus doesn't support the DataTemplates I need (for showing/selecting the value of one property for an object with multiple properties).
Automatically Filtering a ComboBox in WPF didn't work because it doesn't seem to ever find the EditableTextBox portion of the inherited ComboBox code (via (TextBox)base.GetTemplateChild("PART_EditableTextBox") which seems to always returns null).
Building a Filtered ComboBox for WPF just gets stuck in a refresh loop then overflows the stack after I type just a few letters.
Other things I've considered:
I know that Windows Forms' Combobox control has AutoCompleteMode and I could embed it in WPF, but I can't imagine it would play very well with my WPF data bindings.
Perhaps it is too complex and I need to simplify, maybe by building one-dimensional (single-property) ObservableCollections for the ComboBoxen... However, the challenge of applying multiple filters (one set by another control's value, and one from what the user is typing) to multiple controls using different views of the same DataSet would require a ridiculous amount of processing power to destroy and rebuild the list every time the user types a character!
So... I'm at wit's end. Any suggestions?
If your Combobox has some data source attached to it ,
just make
1-IsTextSearchEnabled = true.
2-IsEditable = true.
you are good to go
Try this one:
http://blogs.windowsclient.net/dragonz/archive/2010/02/23/autocomplete-textbox-control-for-wpf.aspx
I have a following requirement for a very complex UI. (Complex here means there are lot of controls in the form [approximately 100]). I am using MVVM (if my problem requires it to slightly go away from MVVM I am ok with it)
My question is for Editable ComboBox and TextBox. But I would say I like to hear a common algorithm which will fit all controls.
Requirement 1 : The user edits the content and goes to next control, the color of the control/text should become red.
Requirement 2 : When the user comes back to the previously edited control and enters the value which was initially present, the color of the control/text should become back to black.
I know the requirement is tough and I have been breaking my head to design a generic algorithm using which I can store the previous value and call a function to change the color of control.
To just give you all an idea, --> I tried storing 2 properties for every TextBox like Default_Text and Text. But since the number of properties are huge, the memory footprint is very huge. Also maintaining so many properties is very tough.
--> I tried adding a Dictionary to every ViewModel to store what values have got changed. But here the problem I faced was giving unique keys to all the controls in my application, which is not very helpful
--> I had even thought and tried about subclassing controls like TextBox, ComboBox and overriding some methods to suit my requirement, but sadly I failed miserabley when I started adding validations and all.
So here I am stuck with designing a generic WPF property system/algorithm to handle all undo redo functionality, changing styles of controls,etc!!!
It will be really great if you experts can guide me in right direction and also help me in developing such an algorithm/system. A sample illustration will be nice though!!!
I found an answer to the above problem. I used attached behavior for this. More details on this link Function call from XAML from StackOverFlow.
When I databind, I store the initial value of the DataBound variable in the Tag property by using Binding=OneWay. Then I have written a attached behaviour for LostFocus event. Whenever the user enters a control and then goes to other control, it fires LostFocus event and calls my attached behaviour. In this, I check whether the value is equal to the value in Tag. If it is same, I display in black else I display in red.
Attached Behaviour rocks in WPF. I can achieve anything from that cleanly without code cluttering!!!!
Another alternative is to use some "dirty" tracking in your models (or viewmodels) and bind to a properties isdirty (and convert it to a color).
I wanted to know which one amongst Style and UserControl would be better to use in WPF?
For example:
I have created an image button in two different ways.
One uses Style and ContentTemplate property is set.
It uses one other class with dependency properties.
The other way is I have created a UserControl which has a button and its content property is set.
The file UserControl.xaml.cs also contains the dependency properties.
For Code details see the answers of this question:
Custom button template in WPF
Which one would be better to use? In which scenario should one go for Style or UserControl or any CustomControl?
Styles are limited to setting default properties on XAML elements. For example, when I set the BorderBrush , I can specify the brush but not the width of the border. For complete freedom of a control’s appearance, use templates. To do this, create a style and specify the Template property.
Styles and templates still only allow you to change the appearance of a control. To add behavior and other features, you’ll need to create a custom control.
For example,
To create a button like a play button use styles and templates, but to create a a play button which will change its appearance after pausing it use UserControl.
For this type of thing I would go with Style, even though I'm not really adept with graphical tools. I tend to produce a basic, boring style that I can get started with and then prettify it once the application functionality has been verified.
The nicest thing about WPF is being able to distance much of the graphical look, feel and behaviour away from the code.
This allows you to change the style of your application without revisiting the code and indeed means that you can change styles on the fly at runtime.
There is an awkward line to tread with regards to how much behaviour is placed within the XAML and how much is placed within the code. A rough guide would be to decide on what behaviour must always be present within the UI and place that in the code, everything else place within the XAML.
Think of the code as being an abstract class with defined interfaces and the XAML Styles as being classes based on that class and you'll get an idea of what I mean.
Conversely, I know that people who are far more adept at the GUI work prefer to put more functionality in the XAML and others who prefer the code side, because they find the GUI work slow or difficult.
When thought of that way you'll see that there's never really a right or wrong answer, just better solutions that suit your skills.
Is there a simple way in WPF to create a usercontrol with different modes for display, update or insert a new object?
I'm thinking (coming from a web background) something like a listview control where you can create display templates for the different modes. You can then quickly change the mode, depending what you need to do.
Any links that points me in the right direction is very welcome.
Thanks
The closest option to what you're thinking would to be to use a DataTemplateSelector. Set ListView.ItemTemplateSelector to an instance of your class, and then based on the current mode of your app you can return the appropriate template for that mode.
You might also consider using the VisualStateManager to create states for your control for each of the modes, and then change the template (or parts of the template) based on the state of the control.