I need to setup different commands for ViewModels like Close, Edit, Cancel, ShowPic, ShowVideo.
Based on different ViewModels I have, I have common commands like Close, Edit, Cancel that does same operation, only context can be different. Then for other like ShowPic, ShowVideo they are belonging to their own viewmodels.
In such scenarios how to organise your commands as good practice:
Do you place them all in a separate class call "Commands"?
Do you place them inside there respective ViewModels even some are common?
Do you separate common commands from others?
Thanks for your advise and sample how you would organise them.
the answer is "2".
Even if other ViewModels have the same commands, its your injected services (read up on "IoC" if you don't know what i'm talking about) that do the heavy lifting in your ViewModels and allow you to avoid redundant logic.
Certain commands which are not view specific (e.g. Print, Save etc. which has common functionality independent of a view) can be declared as static in some static Uility class with Execute and CanExecute handlers and can be bound using x:Static attribute in XAML.
But the commands which are view specific should reside in the ViewModel.
Related
In my WPF application, I have several models and viewmodels. Consider an example:
The SurfaceCondition property of my RoadViewmodel changes. I want this to (asynchronously) trigger a change of the Wheel property of my CarViewmodel.
I can think of several solutions, but I sense this particular problem has a well-recognized solution. Using messages? Putting a reference in the RoadViewmodel to the CarViewmodel and trigger an update through the property? Merging the viewmodels? WPF gurus out there, please enlighten me!
Definitely not the two last solutions you propose as they violate Seperation Of Concerns (RoadViewModel knowing about CarViewModel) / DRY principles (RoadViewModel having to update CarViewModel or merging two classes).
Messages on the other hand seems like a fine, decoupled solution here. There are a couple of implementations available, for example Prism has en EventAggregator class, MVVM Toolkit has MessageBus etc. Or search for terms like 'MVVM event bus'. Now whatever you choose, know that it is always good to not use those classes directly but instead pass an interface. For example with Prism, you'd program your viewmodels to use the IEventAggregator interface only. In the actual application you pass them an instance of the actual EventAggregator, whereas during unit tests you pass the a mock.
Okay, so I am working with Microsoft Prism in WPF using a MVVMC(or MVCVM) pattern.
In my ChatModule I have a series of Views, ViewModels, and one Controller.
For the Views I have
ChatAreaView - Displays the chat messages that come in to be read. This is hosted inside of a TabControl region so that I can have chat windows between the user and other users, or maybe file transfer windows, etc.
UserAreaView - This is a list of the users. Right clicking has context menu to interact with them... like sending a file or whispering.
MessageAreaView - This is where the user types in messages to be sent to all of the others.
For each view, I have a corresponding ViewModel. ChatAreaViewModel, UserAreaViewModel and MessageAreaViewModel. These ViewModels essentially only contain properties.
For example, the UserAreaViewModel defines a struct of type User which is essentially just a Name. Actually this is defined outside of the class, but still... it uses it. It has an ObservableCollection to store a list of all the Users who are currently connected. It also has ICommand properties defined to interact with the user. Right now I have SendFile, Whisper and Nudge... with intent on adding more in the future.
The Controller creates these views and ViewModels, and marriages them. It news them up, assigns the ViewModel as the corresponding View's DataContext, and sets all the initial properties of the ViewModel. Over the lifetime of the module, it will react to user interaction and execute DelegateCommands that it has assigned to each of the ViewModel's ICommand properties. These will further alter the state of the properties in a ViewModel.
I am using the actual types of Views and ViewModels, instead of interfaces, like such.
#region Views
ChatAreaView viewChatArea;
UserListView viewUserArea;
MessageView viewMessageArea;
LoginPromptView viewLoginPrompt;
#endregion
#region ViewModels
ChatAreaViewModel viewModelChatArea;
UserAreaViewModel viewModelUserArea;
MessageAreaViewModel viewModelMessageArea;
LoginPromptViewModel viewModelLoginPrompt;
#endregion
Would things be a lot more neat, less coupled if I defined interfaces for the Views and ViewModels, and operated on these interfaces within the controller instead of the concrete implementations? Could I then just register them with my Container in the Module class(which is essentially the root of each Module)?
What do I have to gain from doing this? How would I implement an interface for each view to distinguish them from the others? They don't really do ANYTHING except have XAML... and teh ViewModel's don't really do anything either except have certain properties. And those properties might be subject to change. On the UserAreaViewModel for instance, I will definitely want to add more commands so a user can interact with another user in different ways.
Can somebody help me out here? In my mind I'm thinking I should be abstracting this stuff, but I don't really know a logical way I should be going about it, or even if it's a wise idea to do so. What do I have to gain?
Thank you for your time. The below image is an example of what I'm working on. Ignore the Add new Item button and the styling of everything... that's not what I'm working on right now.
loosely coupled - can replace an entire class with altogether different implementation in future.
independent development.. can inject a dummy UI / view until final UI gets ready. two pieces can evolve at the same time (after having a common contract).
no need to add references to the modules (implementing the view). can use ConfigurationModuleCatalog to discover types from config file.
Is it possible / practical to implement WPF commands as standalone objects? If so, how is this typically done? Most of the examples I see about commanding typically involve using RoutedCommand, RoutedUICommand, or some other implementation of ICommand like RelayCommand. The way these commands work in the MVVM pattern is to expose an instance of one of these types of commands through a property. Inside the ViewModel, the logic for the command is implemented as a method on the ViewModel and then passed as a delegate to the command object.
The "classic" Command pattern as I understand it would be to have each command implemented as it's own standalone object, such as an OpenCustomerViewCommand. Since the logic would be completely encapsulated in its own object, it could potentially be reused in other parts of my app. For example, if I could open the CustomerView from several places in my app it might be helpful to be able to simply create an instance of the OpenCustomerViewCommand on each ViewModel where the CustomerView could be accessed, rather than copy and paste that method into each ViewModel, and pass the delegate to a RelayCommand. If I understand correctly, the predefined ApplicationCommands such as Cut and Paste behave this way.
To me, having to provide the logic inside the ViewModel seems to diminish the value of the command pattern a bit. I suppose I don't really understand the major difference between doing it this way, and having a code behind that implements command handlers for UI events. Is there any reason I should be using the RoutedCommand pattern over the more classic approach I described above?
You could do this, but it requires some method of routing the request appropriately.
In your example, provided the OpenCustomerViewCommand knows how and where to open the "Customer View", you could easily reuse this anywhere. Instead of using a class like RelayCommand, you can just implement ICommand directly and add your logic to do this.
The problem, however, is that most commands tend to be more of an adapter for xaml to execute ViewModel-specific functionality. In most applications on which I've worked, there tend to be few commands that really need the reuse - most commands are tied to functionality specific to the ViewModel in question. As such, something like RelayCommand makes hooking this up fairly easy.
I'm using MVVM Light toolkit (which I love). I currently have messaging in place for some interaction originating from the ViewModel and intended for consumption by the View. Typically these types of messages indicate the View should do something like hide itself, show a confirmation message that data was saved, etc.
This works. In the constructor for the View, I register with the Messenger:
Messenger.Default.Register<NotificationMessage<PaperNotification>>(this, n => HandlePaperNotification(n));
When I'm using the Messenger to communicate cross-cutting concerns between ViewModels (like identity), I can see that when the ViewModel is cleaned up in the ViewModelLocator, the base class for ViewModels (ViewModelBase) unregisters any subscribed messages. I don't have to do anything, as MVVM Light Toolkit handles that for me. However, when I use them in the Views, I have to expressly unregister them at Closing time, like so:
Messenger.Default.Unregister(this);
I suppose I could implement a base class for Views to inherit from.
However, it strikes me that perhaps this is a code smell to be using the Messenger in the View... it works, but it might not be the best way. I'm wondering if I should instead create a property on the ViewModel and bind whatever part of the View's elements to it. In the example of hiding a form, a property could be a boolean called "Show". As I think about it, I can see that in many cases this will result in having to write a ValueConverter. One way seems less testable. The other way seems to require much more code and perhaps the introduction of excess ValueConverters, which could become a code smell in themselves.
So (after all that build up) my question is this:
Is it preferable to use messages within the View or is it better to add properties (and potentially ValueConverters) to allow the ViewModel to drive it in a more bindable fashion?
In MVVM. ViewModel comunicates with View through DataBinding and Commands. If you need some other functionality, you need to implement it using this means.
Messaging is supposed to be only for ViewModels. Views are supposed to be "stupid" visualisers of your data in ViewModel.
The Messaging logic in MVVM Light is there for communication between ViewModels. I've never run into any communication between View and ViewModel that I couldn't solve with binding and/or commands. Sometimes I need Value Converters and sometimes I need code in the code-behind, but I've never had to make the ViewModel directly push data to the View.
This is an interesting discussion and I found this thread when I was wondering about view model to view communication. Interestingly, MVVMLight's creator seems to find it perfectly acceptable to send messages from a view model to a view. Another example of differing opinions about what is a good MVVM design.
Robert Martin says: "There should never be more than one reason for a class to change".
Let's consider the ViewModel class which is bound to a View. It is possible (or even probable) that the ViewModel consists of properties that are not really related to each other. For small views the ViewModel may be quite coherent, but while the application gets more complex the ViewModel will expose data that will be subject to change for different and unrelated reasons.
Should we worry about the SRP principle in the case of ViewModel class or not?
The ViewModel single responsibility is to provide the View the information it needs. If the View needs different and unrelated properties that is not important as the ViewModel only has one reason to change and that is the View showing different properties. So you shouldn't worry too much.
That said, if the ViewModel does get huge, maybe you could think about dividing the view into several subviews to improve reusability and keep the Views and the ViewModels manageable.
I agree with gcores.
Once you see ViewModel grow to more than two screenfuls of text, it is time to consider splitting ViewModel into several child models.
Another rule of thumb is that I never have more than two levels of nesting inside XAML file -- if one part of the view becomes too complex, it is time for view refactoring -- extract inner XAML into separate UserControl and create corresponding ViewModel, which will be default data context on child view.
Yes, but that doesn't mean poor design couldn't force you into it.
I agree that splitting your screens into multiple Views with multiple ViewModels is necessary to reduce bloat and complexity. Here's another pattern I've employed to help stick to SRP using MVVM:
Here's one scenario. My ViewModel needs to obtain data and respond to filter commands from the UI. I create the ViewModel to be composite in structure. That is, child classes that have access to private members of the ViewModel perform linear tasks such as handling the filtering. I might also have another child class that performs the necessary logic for selection of items based on criteria. You get the idea. Once the ViewModel is performing certain functions that span across several methods, it may be a good candidate to delegate to a child class. The child classes remain part of the main ViewModel, so it's just a way of reducing the size of the ViewModel and makes unit testing these linear operations easier.