Changing how Caliburn.micro places your usercontrol on a window - wpf

Question

I have an app using Caliburn.micro and a custom window manager. The window manager is creating my own Base Window so I can customize the look and feel across the application.
I would like to add some controls on the window something like:
<DockPanel>
<ContentPresenter Content="{Binding CustomContent}" />
<StatusBar Height="20" DockPanel.Dock="Bottom" Background="Blue"/>
</DockPanel>
I would like to have Caliburn put the usercontrol from my ViewModel in the ContentPresenter, but Caliburn is replacing the entire content of my window.
I did this in the window:
using System.Windows;
namespace CaliburnCustomWindow
{
public partial class WindowBase
{
public static readonly DependencyProperty CustomContentProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("CustomContent", typeof (object), typeof (WindowBase));
public object CustomContent
{
get { return GetValue(CustomContentProperty); }
set { SetValue(CustomContentProperty, value); }
}
public WindowBase()
{
InitializeComponent();
}
}
}
And then modified my WindowManager to do this:
using System.Windows;
using Caliburn.Micro;
namespace CaliburnCustomWindow
{
internal class AppWindowManager : WindowManager
{
protected override Window EnsureWindow(object model, object view, bool isDialog)
{
Window window = view as Window;
if (window == null)
{
if (view.GetType() == typeof (MainView))
{
window = new WindowBase
{
CustomContent = view,
SizeToContent = SizeToContent.Manual
};
window.Height = 500;
window.Width = 500;
}
window.SetValue(View.IsGeneratedProperty, true);
}
else
{
Window owner2 = InferOwnerOf(window);
if (owner2 != null && isDialog)
{
window.Owner = owner2;
}
}
return window;
}
}
}
But it doesn't work. That binding to the CustomContent dependency property doesn't seem to work.
Is is possible to do this? If so how?

Answer 1

Could you not either use the default WindowManager implementation, and pass in a new instance of a wrapper DialogViewModel (and create the associated DialogView):
this.WindowManager.ShowDialog(new DialogViewModel(myViewModel));
or abstract this code in an implementation of an IDialogPresenter or similar if you wanted to simplify the client code:
this.DialogPresenter.Show(myViewModel);