I wrote a user control for my project. Now I want to have a template for it where everything is moved around.
How would I go about doing this? I'm looking and it seems impossible? I see many paths on how to do this but what would be the best way?
Some ideas I have:
Rewrite the user control as a control so it can be templated
Create a second user control, but have it databind to the same viewmodel
You should take the first option. Rewrite the original control as "Silverlight Templated Control" borrowing from the original UserControl xaml to help you set up the initial default template.
Review the MSDN topic: How to: Create a New Control by Creating a ControlTemplate
This forms a good basis. However that example doesn't make enough use of TemplateBinding, in your implementation you should make wider use of that.
Related
I need to create a basic user control with certain functionality (like dragging, minimizing and more..).
Now I need a bunch of other user controls to inherit from it and add their content.
I want an option to add new user controls that implements only a part of the base control and remains with the rest of the elements and functionality.
How can I bind a certain element (grid, stackpanael,.. whatever..) from the base user control to the new control? (without loading xaml in the code behind)
I basically want to "plant" a xaml element in a dedicated element on the base user control from a different user control.
If you write a custom control, one of the Controls you can use in the template is called a "ContentControl." Then when you use the Custom Control on a page, you can specify in xaml what the content is going to be. Thus you can put in a Grid, StackPanel, whatever in there.
But note that writing your own Custom Control is rarely done other than by 3rd party component vendors, as it requires a fairly deep knowledge of SL (for example, how to use Dependancy Properties). More commonly used is the "User Control" which is far easier to use and requires no such knowledge. I usually start by trying to accomplish what I need with a UserControl, and if I hit a roadblock, then switch over to a CustomControl.
But most of the existing controls already come with the functionality you describe - drag and drop, minimize etc. SL has a rich UI control set already, so a good place to start is by seeing if one of the existing controls has most of what you need, and then take it from there.
Greg
I made a user control, and in my control I have "Title", graphically "Title" is a TextBlock, but I want those who use mon control will have the option to change it, so, the first idea is the create a property "TitleTemplate" that inherits from "DataTemplate", I'm just following the wpf logic, but I cant find any tutorial that can help me.
I think, u should read more about TemplateBinding and ContentPresenter.
I suggest u read this articles:
Using Templates to Customize WPF Controls
and
Dr.WPF
After some research, I have concluded that the best way is the create a CustomControl, not a UserControl, because, my control is not a composition of other controls, I hope that helps.
So much reading, and so much about inheritance, I can't find any direct answers, so here goes.
If you have a base-class derived to do certain things, look or act a certain way, you can subclass it and get all the functionality of the parent class with only slightly modified differential. The same does not appear to be the same for working with WPF Themes... more specifically, the combobox control (similar issues with textbox, but that's obviously less complex).
By looking at the Control Template Examples, they discuss the entire structure of it, the borders, backgrounds, glyphs, actions, properties, etc.
If the ONLY thing I want to do with a combobox is to change the border of it to Red if there is an error in it, it appears, I have to basically redefine the entire thing and somehow put in my custom trigger setting / color to be implemented.
Somewhat similar is that of the textbox control and how its created. It has the named control when trying to nuts around with the background color... you can't just say... background = some static brush value.
What shortcuts are out there to only allow overriding these small elements without having to re-create the entire template control. I can just imagine what would go on with grids, tabbed controls, and others that could get extremely messed up if you miss one simple thing.
I also see that some controls are made up of OTHER Control.Templates, so how might I be able to attach to changing the property setting on just the single element of the control template... Such as the combobox has the control template for the Toggle Button. From that, it has a border via x:Name="Border" and I want to change THAT element within a derived style.
Thanks
I might not understand your question here. But from what i get is:
Yes you can't partially implement Templates, in fact i wouldn't know how this could be possible. But, if you want to change certain things, you can of course do that. You can create Styles, Templates, Brushes etc. as DependencyProperties and use TemplateBinding to bind to them, on the given child control.
Remember that WPF allows always to change the template on the fly. if we could partially change the template this would might hurt performance or could get messy and complicated. Still, you can do that using ContentControls and TemplateBinding or simply Triggers.
For my custom controls, which might contain multiple part sub controls, i usually add a style for them. For example, a custom ComboBox would contain a ToggleButtonStyle.
One thing that would be nice though, would be to add control template triggers without the need to reimplement the template.
I want to create custom WPF control that has a single "child" control inside. Subclassing ContentControl or UserControl works, but has one flaw: these controls don't work in designer mode.
By "don't work" I mean this scenario: suppose I have a Canvas with my custom control in it. I want to put, say, a Button inside my control. I drag it from the toolbox, and it appears inside my control. However, XAML view shows that the new button actually belongs to Canvas, not to my control.
I can place it inside my control by manually editing XAML, but I want the designer to work too.
Interestingly, when I subclass Canvas, Grid or Panel, designer works as expected. However, these controls have many children, which is not what I need.
How can I make a single-child control that works in designer?
how about inheriting from Border? that way you could spare yourself the hassle with Designer Extensibility
I had the same problem with a content control I am writing and found an easy solution on this
StackOverflow thread.
Just implement the HitTestCore method:
protected override System.Windows.Media.HitTestResult HitTestCore(System.Windows.Media.PointHitTestParameters hitTestParameters)
{
return new PointHitTestResult(this, hitTestParameters.HitPoint);
}
I also had a similar question here.
But after digging and digging it seams that the real answer is "NO", there isn't any official way to support dragging controls straight into a custom Content-Control at Design-Time, even implementing 'HitTestCore' as Stephan's answer suggests, does not enable drag&drop at design-time for ContentControl.
For such purposes you should consider inheriting from either Grid or Panel (to allow multiple child controls), or Border (to allow single child).
I have an app with MVVM which works fine. Now I want to replace one of my controls with a dynamic control. By dynamic I mean that I have no idea what control this is, only that it is a GUI control. It could be something as simple as a image, or a custom third party user control that will be created by someone else after this app is done.
Can someone shed some light on how this can be achieved in MVVM? I've done it before a long time ago using ListBox or similar (iirc) to generate GUI elements (don't remember details). But I'd like to learn the theory behind it this time.
Edit:
Lets say the View contains a list of instances of for example System.Windows.UIElement. I want to display all of these UI controls on a surface (for instance in a stacked control).
You could create a View that exposes a Content property as a placeholder (so a ContentControl might be all that is needed) The content property could then be set to the dynamic control.
You would have to add a little reflection to dynamically load the assembly and instantiate the required control.
The dynamically loaded control would have to access the data by using the DataContext property. If the dynamic control is MVVM too it might have its own ViewModel so you would have to find a way to load that too (reflexction again?) and point the DataContext of the control to the loaded ViewModel.
Does this make sense, is this what you are looking for?