Setting Focus on TextBox from ViewModel in WPF - wpf

Question

I am having a master window in which there are plenty of user control. and using navigation i am able to access the user controls. But by question is how to set focus on the first text box when ever the user control is opened.
I tried with dependency property and boolean flags, i was able to succeeded a bit. When i first render the UserControl i was able to focus but when i open for the second time i was not able to set focus on the TextBox.
And one more thing, i have validation for TextBoxes, if the validation fails then the textbox should be emptied and the focus should be on the respective text box.
How can i achieve this using MVVM in WPF (CLR 3.5, VS2008)
thanks in advance.

Answer 1

If you have a UserControl then you also have CodeBehind.
Place this inside your codebehind and you will do fine.
this.Loaded += (o, e) => { Keyboard.Focus(textBox1) }
Place this inside your UserControl XAML if you wish to listen to validation errors.
<UserControl>
<Grid Validation.Error="OnValidationError">
<TextBox Text{Binding ..., NotifyOnValidationError=true } />
</Grid>
<UserControl>
Inside the CodeBehind of your UserControl you will have something like this:
public void OnValidationError(o , args)
{
if(o is TextBox)
{
(TextBox)o).Text = string.Empty;
}
}

Answer 2

You should use AttachedProperty to stick to MVVM pattern it'll keep your view model independent of UI code and fully unit testable. Following attached property binds a boolean property to focus and highlight the TextBox, if you do not want the highlighting then you can remove the highlighting code and just work with focus code.
public class TextBoxBehaviors
{
#region HighlightTextOnFocus Property
public static readonly DependencyProperty HighlightTextOnFocusProperty =
DependencyProperty.RegisterAttached("HighlightTextOnFocus", typeof (bool), typeof (TextBoxBehaviors),
new PropertyMetadata(false, HighlightTextOnFocusPropertyChanged));
public static bool GetHighlightTextOnFocus(DependencyObject obj)
{
return (bool) obj.GetValue(HighlightTextOnFocusProperty);
}
public static void SetHighlightTextOnFocus(DependencyObject obj, bool value)
{
obj.SetValue(HighlightTextOnFocusProperty, value);
}
private static void HighlightTextOnFocusPropertyChanged(DependencyObject sender,
DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
{
var uie = sender as UIElement;
if (uie == null) return;
if ((bool) e.NewValue)
{
uie.GotKeyboardFocus += OnKeyboardFocusSelectText;
uie.PreviewMouseLeftButtonDown += OnMouseLeftButtonDownSetFocus;
}
else
{
uie.GotKeyboardFocus -= OnKeyboardFocusSelectText;
uie.PreviewMouseLeftButtonDown -= OnMouseLeftButtonDownSetFocus;
}
}
private static void OnKeyboardFocusSelectText(object sender, KeyboardFocusChangedEventArgs e)
{
var textBox = sender as TextBox;
if (textBox == null) return;
textBox.SelectAll();
}
private static void OnMouseLeftButtonDownSetFocus(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e)
{
var textBox = sender as TextBox;
if (textBox == null) return;
if (!textBox.IsKeyboardFocusWithin)
{
textBox.Focus();
e.Handled = true;
}
}
#endregion
}
You can use this attached property in on your TextBox which you want to focus/highlight...
<TextBox ... local:TextBoxBehaviors.HighlightTextOnFocus="{Binding IsScrolledToEnd}" ... />

Answer 3

You can also try using FocusManager
<UserControl>
<Grid FocusManager.FocusedElement="{Binding Path=FocusedTextBox, ElementName=UserControlName}">
<TextBox x:Name="FocusedTextBox" />
</Grid>
<UserControl>