Is there any idea of master layout and child layouts in wpf for xaml pages?
I have one xaml file which I want to use in two different Xaml files with different Data but same UI.
I don't want to create same design two times, I just want to have only one xaml page on both places.
Use a ContentControl with different ContentTemplate. Define these ContentTemplate as Resource. Specify DataType in the DataTemplate of your ContentTemplate. And in different places just set appropriate Content of your ContentControl using Binding. This Content can be any property of any kind.
Eg;
<ContentControl Content="{Binding View1}" />
<ContentControl Content="{Binding View2}" />
Beauty is DataTemplate is automatically picked up by the ContentControl.
Related
I have a data template selector, which I am using to pick between two different templates. Problem is, these templates include a grid as the outer element etc. What I have done is I have my template selector in my resource control in my UserControl.Resources:
<l:UIDataTemplateSelector x:Key="UISelector"
ClassicDataTemplate="{StaticResource ClassicDataTemplate}"
ModernDataTemplate="{StaticResource ModernDataTemplate}" />
Then outside of this, I have my Content Control, where my templates are in Control Templates:
<ContentControl ContentTemplateSelector="{StaticResource UISelector}"></ContentControl>
When I run my code, this causes it to crash, but if I use:
<ContentControl Template="{StaticResource ClassicDataTemplate}"></ContentControl>
To use one template or the other, it works perfectly fine. Is there a simple way to get it to use the template selector to display it?
A ContentControl has a Template of type ControlTemplate. It also accepts a ContentTemplate of type DataTemplate and a ContentTemplateSelector which is expected to select a DataTemplate. In your case, since Template="{StaticResource ClassicDataTemplate}" is working, I suspect you created ControlTemplate instead of DataTemplate. You need a working ContentTemplate="{StaticResource ClassicDataTemplate}" in order to transfer to the selector.
I'm using an MVVM pattern for my WPF application. If the "home" view model, which controls the layout of my application's main window, I have a ChildViewModel property. This holds a viewmodel that can be switched according to what the user is doing. When they select menu items, the child view model switches and the main area of the screen (it's in an Outlook style) switches accordingly.
I do this with a ContentControl and DataTemplate like this: (I'm only showing one of the embeddable views here to keep it short).
<ContentControl Grid.Row="1" Grid.Column="1" Margin="3"
Content="{Binding ChildViewModel}">
<ContentControl.Resources>
<DataTemplate DataType="{x:Type vm:VersionsViewModel}">
<Embeddable:VersionsView />
</DataTemplate>
</ContentControl.Resources>
</ContentControl>
I also want to add a ribbon to my main window, using the Telerik RadRibbonView control. I want this to have some fixed tabs and buttons that are always visible. In addition, I want to add and remove entire tabs, and buttons within existing tabs, according to the type of child view model. I'd like this to be done in the view in a similar manner to the way I've done the content control, above.
Is this possible? I've tried lots of things but got nowhere so far. I know I could do it by creating a huge "super ribbon" and binding visibility properties but this seems cludgey. I could also have multiple ribbons, each containing the common controls, but this would cause a maintenance problem.
In the end I went with the "super ribbon" approach, as I couldn't find any other way.
I'm trying to port current WinForms app to WPF and need help with building WPF class structure.
Currently in WinForms, I have one base class (with Menu, Toolbar, Grid and Context menu) and several inherited classes with different datasources and columns for the grid and additional buttons for menu, toolbar and context menu.
Questions:
What will be the best WPF class structure for my usercontrol to avoid inheritance?
Can I move ToolBar into ResourceDictionary (e.g. ControlTemplate)?
How to add new buttons or to bind commands to existed buttons, if buttons will be specified in a separate resource file?
Any other ideas?
Due to inheritance restrictions in WPF I see only one way to avoid duplicating Menu, Toolbar, etc. - implement base class in C# code only without XAML. And likely I can't use XAML for inherited classes as well (have no idea how to add new buttons in XAML into Toolbar created in base class)
In WPF a Toolbar is an ItemsControl (same for Menu), so it has an ItemsSource property you can bind to your collection of toolbar items.
<Window.Resources>
<DataTemplate x:Key="ItemTemplate1">
<StackPanel>
<TextBlock Text="{Binding Property1}"/>
</StackPanel>
</DataTemplate>
</Window.Resources>
<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" DataContext="{Binding MyViewModel}">
<ToolBar HorizontalAlignment="Left" VerticalAlignment="Top" ItemTemplate="{DynamicResource ItemTemplate1}" ItemsSource="{Binding ToolbarItems}"/>
</Grid>
In this code, ToolbarItems is an ObservableCollection< MyToolBarItem >, where MyToolbarItem is a viewmodel that represents one toolbar item.
MyToolBarItem could be the base class, with several classes inheriting from it. Then you can use a DataTemplateSelector to use a different template depending on the type of toolbar item it is.
In this way, all your user controls that have a toolbar can use the same templates you define in your dictionary; each toolbar is just bound to a different collection of MyToolBarItems.
If some of that sounds overwhelming, you can read up on some MVVM. It is the design pattern that makes WPF great.
I have a tab content template set to my tab control:
<TabControl SelectedIndex="0"
ItemsSource="{Binding Tabs}"
ItemTemplate="{StaticResource AppTabItemTemplate}"
ContentTemplate="{StaticResource AppTabContentTemplate}" />
The thing is that most of the times the current template is wanted, but there are times when I want to display another template instead. The item source provides this data whether it should show one or another, but how can I do an "if" in XAML and use an alternative UI when the other layout is wanted?
Should this logic be part of the template or the containing XAML that includes this tab control? The information that is used to make the decision between UIs is in the item source.
Use a DataTemplateSelector.
You will need to define your selection logic in a class that derives DataTemplateSelector, create a resource for your selector in XAML and then use it by assigning the resource to the ItemTemplateSelector property of your tab control.
I'm brand spanking new to WPF and am trying to play around with projects to better understand what I'm reading.
My understanding of a resource is that it is the instance, you can't use it like a factory and create instances of it. For example, a XAML-defined rectangle. You can reference it, but you can't have numerous instances of it all over the surface.
In WPF, what would be the way to do that? If I define a Rectangle as a resource with specific properties and wanted to have multiple instances of that within a dynamically-generated grid, how should I be going about it? Or is there a different way I should be trying to do this?
Purely academic exercise with no real-world application.
Actually there's nothing about resources in particular that prevents you from using it multiple times. A perfect example of this is brush resources, style resources, etc. You define them in XAML and the XAML parser creates a single instance of the resources and stores them in the resource dictionary and these brushes, styles, etc can be used as property values many times even though only a single instance of the resource was created.
But having said that, as you noted, you can't really define a Rectangle resource and use it multiple times in the visual tree. This has nothing to do with the fact that it's a resource, but rather it has to do with the fact that a FrameworkElement cannot be a child of more than one parent element.
So what we have instead is called "templates". These tell WPF how to create an element tree but does not actually create the tree until you instantiate the template. Below is an example.
<UserControl>
<ItemsControl ItemsSource="{Binding WholeBunchOfItems}">
<ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>
<DataTemplate>
<Grid>
<Rectangle Fill="Yellow" />
<ContentPresenter Content="{Binding}" />
</Grid>
</DataTemplate>
</ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>
</ItemsControl>
</UserControl>
In this example I've bound an ItemsControl to a collection of some sort. For each item in the collection, the ItemsControl will use my DataTemplate to render the item. Within a DataTemplate you can use data binding to access the current item.
I would suggest reading up on MSDN about ControlTemplate, DataTemplate, and Style. These are all important concepts in WPF/Silverlight.
To get multiple instances replicated across a grid or listbox, you need to set the data template to define the UI controls for each row of data, and then databind the grid or listbox to a collection of data that determines how many rows and the individual field values.
Key term for you to research first: data template.