I want to integrate two existing applications into one. One of those apps is built on Windows Forms and the other on WPF.
Is it possible to achieve this?
WPF supplies the WindowsFormsHost class that allows you to host WinForms controls inside a WPF window; conversely, WinForms supplies ElementHost that allows you to host WPF controls inside a form.
Unfortunately how well things work out is highly dependent on exactly what you are doing, last time I checked there were more than a few rough edges. For more information, definitely start from this MSDN page.
If you want to have "independent" WPF windows and WinForms forms inside the same application, you will have to make both frameworks "share" some code in your UI thread's message loop. For a primer on how to do that, see here.
There are various classes to help you with this.
For hosting Windows Forms controls in a WPF Window, you can use the WindowsFormsHost class. For hosting WPF Controls in a Windows Forms Window, you can use the ElementHost class.
You can look here for mor information on the subject (windows forms section):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms753178.aspx
Related
I have a WPF application that is in need of syntax highlighting. THIS is exactly what I'm looking for... however its for WinForms. Can I, and if so, how do I add it to my WPF program?
http://wpfsyntax.codeplex.com/
http://devhawk.net/2009/07/09/syntax-highlighting-textboxes-in-wpf-a-sad-story/
There's a walkthrough on MSDN
This walkthrough steps you through an application that hosts a Windows Forms composite control to perform data entry in a WPF application. The composite control is packaged in a DLL. This general procedure can be extended to more complex applications and controls.
In this scenario the WinForms controls are in a separate dll which needs to be signed.
The WPF application needs to use a WinFormsHost control as the container for the control.
If not, how can I know which controls are used in winforms, which controls are used in WPF?
If you develop a WinForms application, WPF controls are not shown in your toolbox, and vice versa.
If you want to use a WinForms control in a WPF application anyway, there's the WindowsFormsHost WPF control for that.
For hosting a WPF control in a Windows Forms app, you can use the System.Windows.Forms.Integration.ElementHost control.
The toolboxes already filter what controls you can use depending on whether you have created a Win Form or a WPF application project.
My fairly large WinForm application needs a GUI overhaul, but I can't afford to do it all at once. I need to know if I can slowly add WPF into it, and if so, how?
Can I add WPF dialogs?
Can I add WPF 'panels' within a WinForm so that I can embed WPF elements?
EDIT
Can I do the opposite and put WinForm dialogs in my WPF application?
Yes, you can host WPF controls in your WinForms applications:
Walkthrough: Hosting a 3-D WPF Composite Control in Windows Forms
Walkthrough: Hosting a Composite WPF Control in Windows Forms
Yep, I've successfully mixed winforms and WPF. I even managed to add WPF windows to win32 apps, changed this app to a dll and used a WPF app to show win32 windows which show WPF windows.
To host WPF windows in WinForm or win32 apps you will need this line befor you .Show() your WpfWindow:
System.Windows.Forms.Integration.ElementHost.EnableModelessKeyboardInterop(myWpfWindow);
See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa348549.aspx
You can use the ElementHost control found in the System.Windows.Forms.Integration namespace. You will need a reference to the WindowsFormsIntegration assembly (in WindowsFormsIntegration.dll)
This control is an empty container into which you can put WPF controls e.g.
myElementHost.Child = someWpfControl;
You can find it in your toolbox and drag and drop it onto a winform like any other control;
Is it possible to have a project containing both Winforms and WPF?
Say a WinForm project that is transformed step by step(form by form) in a WPF one, will be possible to have a Winform opening on a button, and a WPF one opening on a other button?
Yes. You have to pick one technology to display each physical window and control in your app, but there's no reason why you can't mix and match.
For example:
A WinForms window can show a WPF window.
A WPF window can show a WinForms window.
A WinForms window can contain WPF content (see the ElementHost control).
A WPF window can contain WinForms controls (see the WindowsFormsHost control).
This works great.
One can have WPF windows in Windows Forms and Windows Forms windows in WPF
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms745781.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.integration.windowsformshost.aspx
Adding Winforms to WPF projects can be done smoothly (directly from the "Add new item" menu), but there is not straight option to add a WPF window to a Winforms project. Still, I handled to do it following these steps:
Add a WPF User Control (this option is available on the "Add new
item" menu) and then convert it into a WPF Window. Modify the XAML
changing the UserControl parent tag to Window, and remove the
inheritance from UserControl (all of this is explained in this link).
Add a reference to System.Xaml.dll. See this link.
Add a reference to System.Windows.dll (I found it on my computer on this path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Reference Assemblies\Microsoft\Framework.NETFramework\v4.5. Be aware it might be different in yours). See this link.
What you might be looking for is the ElementHost control. What it lets you do is take WPF content and host it in a Windows Forms window. More details are here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms745781.aspx
There is also a control that lets you do the reverse: host Windows Forms content from within WPF:
http://nayyeri.net/host-windows-forms-controls-in-wpf
Between the two, you can move the 'dividing line' between WPF and Windows Forms with some degree of flexibility.
There is at one caveat you'll need to keep in mind. Windows Forms works internally in terms of HWND's... a window managed by the legacy Windows window manager (which handles the z-order). WPF doesn't do this... A WPF tree is typically rendered into a single HWND', and it's WPF that manages things like z-order. What this means to you is that z-order doesn't always work the way you expect it to, and there are things you can't do with hosted Windows Forms controls that you can do with traditional WPF elements. (There is actually a way to solve this, but it involves periodically rendering the HWND into a memory bitmap, rendering that bitmap into a WPF surface, and then redirecting events directed to the WPF surface to the underlying HWND. This is powerful, but tricky and difficult to get right.)
I see no objection to do that.(I have in WinForms Application WPF windows)
Many of the examples used MessageBox.Show which is part of the Windows.Forms.
Of course you must rewrite all windows, not only controls.
Can both WPF and Windows forms controls be used within one application? How difficult or practical an idea is this?
It is fairly straightforward to host WPF controls in a WinForms app with an ElementHost adapter or WinForms controls in a WPF app with a WindowsFormsHost adapter. There are not too many resources on the web showing how to do either of these, however. In the process of learning how to do this for myself I quickly discovered the inherent symmetries between the two pathways. I distilled all my notes into an article comparing and contrasting these symmetries using a unique approach: the article is really two side-by-side articles, comparing every step in detail, starting from creating a user control in one technology to hosting it in an application in the "opposite" technology. My article, published on SimpleTalk.com in August 2010 is available here: Mixing WPF and WinForms.
For completeness, here are a couple good MSDN references, one for each pathway. In fact, the demo solution accompanying my article started from both of these:
Hosting a Windows Forms Composite Control in WPF
Hosting a WPF Control in Windows Forms
I believe there is a WindowsFormsHost control you can put in your WPF apps which will do interop back to WinForms code:
http://blogs.msdn.com/ivo_manolov/archive/2007/07/26/wpf-win32-interop-part-1-hosting-winforms-controls-in-wpf-windows.aspx
We hosted significantly complex WPF controls in an existing LOB WinForms app. It can be done, but we did have issues (some no doubt caused by the steep learning curve). These primarily had to do with loss-of-focus events not being fired when expected, and also keyboard navigation issues.
You can also use an HWNDSource and HWNDHost controls to embed WPF controls in a WinForms (or any Win32, really) app.
When hosting non-WPF content (Be it HTML, WinForms, or Win32 content), you will haveAirspace issues. This means you can't completely compost the WPF content with the hosted content. You also can't animate it etc. There are some interesting issues with respect to scrollviewers see here for more details and a fix also.
Yes you can, both Windows Forms within a WPF application, and WPF controls within Windows Forms. www.novamind.com's mind-mapping application is a successful mix of the two technologies.