MVVM Light, Windows Phone, View & ViewModel navigation between pages - silverlight

Question

I have a page where you basically select a set of options (configuration), and then you go to a next page, where you do some stuff
Using the MVVM Light toolkit, I have a viewmodel that binds to the view of the first page. when the user hits a button, it redirects to another view, which would be the 2nd page
i.e.:
Page2Command = new DelegateCommand((obj) =>
Messenger.Default.Send<Uri>(new Uri("/DoStuffView.xaml", UriKind.Relative),
Common.CommonResources.GoToDoStuffRequest)) });
The problem is, the viewmodel for the 2nd view (the way that I see it) has a couple of parameters in the constructor, which are basically the dependencies on the configuration that was set on the first page.
i.e. :
public DoStuffViewModel(ICollection<Note> availableNotes, SoundMappers soundType)
{
}
The problem lies here.. How can I instantiate the viewmodel with this data that was dynamically selected by the user on the 1st page?.
I can't use the ViewModelLocator pattern that MVVM light provides, since those viewmodels don't have any dependencies, they are just by themselves (or they can retrieve data from a db, file or whatever, but they don't have any dynamic input data). I could do it through the view's constructor, instantiate there the viewmodel, and assign to the view's DataSource the newly created viewmodel, but I think that's not very nice to do.
suggestions?

Answer 1

As I see you send messsage using Messenger class so you are familiar with messaging in MVVM light. You have to define your own message type that should accept your parameters from page 1:
public class Page2ViewModelCreateMessage : MessageBase
{
public ICollection<Note> AvailableNotes{get;set;}
public SoundMappers SoundType{get;set;}
public Page2ViewModelCreateMessage ()
{
}
public Page2ViewModelCreateMessage(ICollection<Note> availableNotes, SoundMappers soundType)
{
this.AvailableNotes = availableNotes;
this.SoundType = soundType;
}
}
You have to send an Page2ViewModelCreateMessage instance with you parameters and send it on navigating:
var message = new Page2ViewModelCreateMessage(myAvailableNotes, mySoundType)
Messenger.Default.Send(message);
On Page2 you have to register for recieving message of type Page2ViewModelCreateMessage:
Messenger.Default.Register<Page2ViewModelCreateMessage>(this, OnPage2ViewModelCreateMessage);
..
public void OnPage2ViewModelCreateMessage(Page2ViewModelCreateMessage message)
{
var page2ViewModel = new Page2ViewModel(messsage.AvailableNotes, message.SoundType);
}
As you can see I have replace your DoStuffViewModel with Page2ViewModel to be more clear.
I hope this will help you.
NOTE:I dont guarantee that code will work as its written in notepad.

Answer 2

The way I do this is to have a central controller class that the ViewModels all know about, via an interface. I then set state into this before having the phone perform the navigation for me. Each ViewModel then interrogates this central class for the state it needs.
There are a number of benefits to this for me:
It allows me to have non-static ViewModels.
I can use Ninject to inject the concrete implementation of the controller class and have it scoped as a singleton.
Most importantly, when tombstoning, I only need to grab the current ViewModel and the controller class.
I ran into a problem with messaging where my ViewModel was the registered listener, because I was View First and not ViewModel First, I was forced to use static ViewModel references. Otherwise the ViewModel wasn't created in time to receive the message.
I use the controller class in conjunction with messages (it is basically the recipient of all messages around the UI) so in future if I refactor, I don't need to change much, just the recipients of the messages.
Come to think of it, the controller class is also my navigation sink - as I have some custom navigation code that skips back paging on certain pages etc.
Here's an example of my current set up:
public interface IController
{
Foo SelectedFoo { get; }
}
public class ViewModel
{
private IController _controller;
public ViewModel(IController controller)
{
_controller = controller;
}
private void LoadData()
{
// Using selected foo, we load the bars.
var bars = LoadBars(_controller.SelectedFoo);
}
}

Answer 3

You could use PhoneApplicationService dictionary to save data you need when navigation from first event, and parse it when you navigateTo second page. you can also use that data in your ViewModels.
Something like this:
PhoneApplicationService.Current.State["DatatFromFirstPage"] = data;
and when navigating to second page:
if (PhoneApplicationService.Current.State.ContainsKey("DatatFromFirstPage"))
{
var dataUsedOnSeconPage= PhoneApplicationService.Current.State["DatatFromFirstPage"];
}
you can use this data globally in entire app