I was adding some workaround code to fix the bug outlined in Is this a bug in DotNet 4 WPF Spell Checking?, (When a WPF TextBox changes Enabled, Visible or ReadOnly states, any SpellCheck custom dictionaries get dropped off until you disable and re-enable SpellCheck) and the simplest fix seemed to be to handle the IsVisibleChanged, IsEnabledChanged, and IsReadOnlyChanged events.
Simple, right? Except there is no IsReadOnlyChanged event. Anybody know why and what the best way to trap a change to IsReadOnly in a WPF TextBox would be?
You can always follow dependency property change with DependencyPropertyDescriptor.AddValueChanged
DependencyPropertyDescriptor.FromProperty(TextBoxBase.IsReadOnlyProperty)
.AddValueChanged(ctrl, OnReadOnlyChanged)
Create a custom class and handle OnPropertyChanged event. Sth like this:
public class MyTextBox: TextBox
{
public MyTextBox() { }
protected override void OnPropertyChanged(DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
{
base.OnPropertyChanged(e);
if (e.Property.ToString() == "IsReadOnly")
{
// here you are sure that ContentPropertyhas changed
}
}
}
I have a WPF UserControl that contains a button. I also have a WPF Window that contains a button.
In both the UserControl and the Window I place the following line in XAML:
UIElement.PreviewMouseLeftButtonDown="OnPreviewMouseLeftButtonDown"
and in 'OnPreviewMouseLeftButtonDown' I've place a debug print that displays args.Source.
When I click on the button that is inside the window, I get the button as the EventArgs source. However, when I click the button that inside the UserControl (which is also inside a window, so I could test it, but not the same window) I get the UserControl as the EventArgs source.
I tired to see if there is some decorator around the UserControl (using snoop) but it seems straight forward.
I can't understand what is so special about UserControl in WPF that I don't get the right sender. Can someone please explain to me what am I missing?
While the question is old, I recently ran into a similar problem myself, involving the ContextMenuOpening event. Some amount of searching yielded the source code to UserControl here, which contains the following section:
// Set the EventArgs' source to be this UserControl
internal override void AdjustBranchSource(RoutedEventArgs e)
{
e.Source=this;
}
So, apparently UserControl sets the Source of ANY routed event to itself. I have no idea why it does this, though...
Use e.OriginalSource as mentioned above. If you need to find the button, then you can use VisualTreeHelper.GetParent to find the actual Button control.
I have a ListBox with an ItemTemplate that contains a control that interacts with the mouse. This interfers with the selection functionality of the ListBox, i.e. clicking a control does not select the item. This is because ListBoxItem sets the Handled property of the mouse event to true in OnMouseLeftButtonDown. I tried the following
protected override void OnMouseLeftButtonDown(MouseButtonEventArgs e) {
base.OnMouseLeftButtonDown(e);
e.Handled = false;
}
but the ListBoxItem “takes over” the mouse and prevents the control from doing its own interaction. Then I had another idea
protected override void OnMouseLeftButtonDown(MouseButtonEventArgs e) {
base.OnMouseLeftButtonDown(e);
((ListBoxItem)VisualTreeHelper.GetParent(VisualTreeHelper.GetParent(VisualTreeHelper.GetParent(this)))).IsSelected = true;
}
which actually works, but feels more like an ugly kludge than an elegant solution. Are there any better solutions that don't rely on the exact contents of the visual tree?
I've found a way that is less of a kludge:
protected override void OnMouseLeftButtonDown(MouseButtonEventArgs e) {
base.OnMouseLeftButtonDown(e);
Selector.SetIsSelected(this, true);
}
For this to have any effect, the control in the ListBox' ItemTemplate needs the following XAML attribute:
Selector.IsSelected="{Binding IsSelected, Mode=OneWayToSource, RelativeSource={RelativeSource AncestorType={x:Type ListBoxItem}}}"
It raises two new questions:
Would it be better to define my own dependency property rather than finding an attached one that isn't currently in use?
Is there a way to achieve something similar in markup only?
I believe the MouseLeftButtonDown is a tunnelling event: you could try using PreviewMouseLeftButtonDown, doing your processing there, then ensuring e.Handled = false; as you tried already - that should do the trick!
Hope that helps.
Here is one simple solution, but unfortunately handler can be attached only in code, not in markup.
Event handler can be added by using handledEventsToo signature of AddHandler method:
myListBox.AddHandler(UIElement.MouseDownEvent,
new MouseButtonEventHandler(ListBox_MouseDown), true);
Third parameter above is handledEventsToo which ensures that this handler will be invoked no matter if it is already marked as Handled (which ListBoxItem does in ListBox).
See Marking Routed Events as Handled, and Class Handling for explanation.
See How to Attach to MouseDown Event on ListBox for example.
I have a Window that contains a custom UserControl. The UserControl needs to know when the Window containing it has been closed so that it can terminate a thread.
My best guess as to how to accomplish this is to handle the UserControl's Unloaded event. However, the Unloaded event only seems to be firing when the user actually clicks to close the window, but not when I programmatically call the Close() method on the window.
For reference sake, here are some of the relevant parts of my code.
MyWindow.xaml:
<Window x:Class="Namespace.MyWindow"
xmlns:controls="clr-namespace:Namespace.Controls">
<controls:MyControl/>
</Window>
MyControl.xaml:
<UserControl x:Class="Namespace.Controls.MyControl"
Unloaded="UserControl_Unloaded"/>
<!-- Stuff -->
</UserControl>
MyControl.xaml.cs:
void UserControl_Unloaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
// Stop the thread.
}
So just to recap, the UserControl_Unloaded() method above is getting called when I close the window "manually" (alt-F4, click the red "X", etc.), but not when from elsewhere in the code I call myWindow.Close(). Any ideas?
Turns out the answer in this question solves the problem for me, too. It still seems strange, though, that the Unloaded event isn't getting fired. Go figure.
In MyWindow class
this.Closing += new System.ComponentModel.CancelEventHandler(Window1_Closing);
void Window1_Closing(object sender, System.ComponentModel.CancelEventArgs e)
{
call User Control Method()
}
Why just not connect handler to the window.Closed event? Your UserControl can walk through ui tree to find the window.
I have a UserControl which contains a TextBox. When my main window loads I want to set the focus to this textbox so I added Focusable="True" GotFocus="UC_GotFocus" to the UserControls definition and FocusManager.FocusedElement="{Binding ElementName=login}" to my main windows definition. In the UC_GotFocus method i simply call .Focus() on the control i want to focus on but this doesn't work.
All i need to do is have a TextBox in a UserControl receive focus when the application starts.
Any help would be appreciated, thanks.
I recently fixed this problem for a login splash screen that is being displayed via a storyboard when the main window is first loaded.
I believe there were two keys to the fix. One was to make the containing element a focus scope. The other was to handle the Storyboard Completed event for the storyboard that was triggered by the window being loaded.
This storyboard makes the username and password canvas visible and then fades into being 100% opaque. The key is that the username control was not visible until the storyboard ran and therefore that control could not get keyboard focus until it was visible. What threw me off for awhile was that it had "focus" (i.e. focus was true, but as it turns out this was only logical focus) and I did not know that WPF had the concept of both logical and keyboard focus until reading Kent Boogaart's answer and looking at Microsoft's WPF link text
Once I did that the solution for my particular problem was straightforward:
1) Make the containing element a focus scope
<Canvas FocusManager.IsFocusScope="True" Visibility="Collapsed">
<TextBox x:Name="m_uxUsername" AcceptsTab="False" AcceptsReturn="False">
</TextBox>
</Canvas>
2) Attach a Completed Event Handler to the Storyboard
<Storyboard x:Key="Splash Screen" Completed="UserNamePassword_Storyboard_Completed">
...
</Storyboard>
and
3) Set my username TextBox to have the keyboard focus in the storyboard completed event handler.
void UserNamePassword_Storyboard_Completed(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
m_uxUsername.Focus();
}
Note that calling item.Focus() results in the call Keyboard.Focus(this), so you don't need to call this explicitly. See this question about the difference between Keyboard.Focus(item) and item.Focus.
Its stupid but it works:
Pop a thread that waits a while then comes back and sets the focus you want. It even works within the context of an element host.
private void ListView_SelectionChanged(object sender, SelectionChangedEventArgs e)
{
System.Threading.ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(
(a) =>
{
System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(100);
someUiElementThatWantsFocus.Dispatcher.Invoke(
new Action(() =>
{
someUiElementThatWantsFocus.Focus();
}));
}
);
}
Just recently I had a list-box that housed some TextBlocks. I wanted to be able to double click on the text block and have it turn into a TextBox, then focus on it and select all the text so the user could just start typing the new name (Akin to Adobe Layers)
Anyway, I was doing this with an event and it just wasn't working. The magic bullet for me here was making sure that I set the event to handled. I figure it was setting focus, but as soon as the event went down the path it was switching the logical focus.
The moral of the story is, make sure you're marking the event as handled, that might be your issue.
“When setting initial focus at application startup, the element to
receive focus must be connected to a PresentationSource and the
element must have Focusable and IsVisible set to true. The recommended
place to set initial focus is in the Loaded event handler"
(MSDN)
Simply add a "Loaded" event handler in the constructor of your Window (or Control), and in that event handler call the Focus() method on the target control.
public MyWindow() {
InitializeComponent();
this.Loaded += new RoutedEventHandler(MyWindow_Loaded);
}
void MyWindow_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) {
textBox.Focus();
}
since i tried a fuzquat's solution and found it the most generic one, i thought i'd share a different version, since some complained about it looking messy. so here it is:
casted.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(new Action<UIElement>(x =>
{
x.Focus();
}), DispatcherPriority.ApplicationIdle, casted);
no Thread.Sleep, no ThreadPool. Clean enough i hope.
UPDATE:
Since people seem to like pretty code:
public static class WpfExtensions
{
public static void BeginInvoke<T>(this T element, Action<T> action, DispatcherPriority priority = DispatcherPriority.ApplicationIdle) where T : UIElement
{
element.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(priority, action);
}
}
now you can call it like this:
child.BeginInvoke(d => d.Focus());
WPF supports two different flavors of focus:
Keyboard focus
Logical focus
The FocusedElement property gets or sets logical focus within a focus scope. I suspect your TextBox does have logical focus, but its containing focus scope is not the active focus scope. Ergo, it does not have keyboard focus.
So the question is, do you have multiple focus scopes in your visual tree?
I found a good series of blog posts on WPF focus.
Part 1: It’s Basically Focus
Part 2: Changing WPF focus in code
Part 3: Shifting focus to the first available element in WPF
They are all good to read, but the 3rd part specifically deals with setting focus to a UI element in a UserControl.
Set your user control to Focusable="True" (XAML)
Handle the GotFocus event on your control and call yourTextBox.Focus()
Handle the Loaded event on your window and call yourControl.Focus()
I have a sample app running with this solution as I type. If this does not work for you, there must be something specific to your app or environment that causes the problem. In your original question, I think the binding is causing the problem.
I hope this helps.
After having a 'WPF Initial Focus Nightmare' and based on some answers on stack, the following proved for me to be the best solution.
First, add your App.xaml OnStartup() the followings:
EventManager.RegisterClassHandler(typeof(Window), Window.LoadedEvent,
new RoutedEventHandler(WindowLoaded));
Then add the 'WindowLoaded' event also in App.xaml :
void WindowLoaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
var window = e.Source as Window;
System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(100);
window.Dispatcher.Invoke(
new Action(() =>
{
window.MoveFocus(new TraversalRequest(FocusNavigationDirection.First));
}));
}
The threading issue must be use as WPF initial focus mostly fails due to some framework race conditions.
I found the following solution best as it is used globally for the whole app.
Hope it helps...
Oran
I converted fuzquat's answer to an extension method. I'm using this instead of Focus() where Focus() did not work.
using System;
using System.Threading;
using System.Windows;
namespace YourProject.Extensions
{
public static class UIElementExtension
{
public static void WaitAndFocus(this UIElement element, int ms = 100)
{
ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(f =>
{
Thread.Sleep(ms);
element.Dispatcher.Invoke(new Action(() =>
{
element.Focus();
}));
});
}
}
}
I've noticed a focus issue specifically related to hosting WPF UserControls within ElementHosts which are contained within a Form that is set as an MDI child via the MdiParent property.
I'm not sure if this is the same issue others are experiencing but you dig into the details by following the link below.
Issue with setting focus within a WPF UserControl hosted within an ElementHost in a WindowsForms child MDI form
I don't like solutions with setting another tab scope for UserControl. In that case, you will have two different carets when navigating by keyboard: on the window and the another - inside user control. My solution is simply to redirect focus from user control to inner child control. Set user control focusable (because by default its false):
<UserControl ..... Focusable="True">
and override focus events handlers in code-behind:
protected override void OnGotFocus(RoutedEventArgs e)
{
base.OnGotFocus(e);
MyTextBox.Focus();
}
protected override void OnGotKeyboardFocus(KeyboardFocusChangedEventArgs e)
{
base.OnGotKeyboardFocus(e);
Keyboard.Focus(MyTextBox);
}
What did the trick for me was the FocusManager.FocusedElement attribute. I first tried to set it on the UserControl, but it didn't work.
So I tried putting it on the UserControl's first child instead:
<UserControl x:Class="WpfApplication3.UserControl1"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml">
<Grid FocusManager.FocusedElement="{Binding ElementName=MyTextBox, Mode=OneWay}">
<TextBox x:Name="MyTextBox"/>
</Grid>
... and it worked! :)
I have user control - stack panel with two text boxes.The text boxes were added in contructor, not in the xaml. When i try to focus first text box, nothing happend.
The siggestion with Loaded event fix my problem. Just called control.Focus() in Loaded event and everthing.
Assuming you want to set focus for Username textbox, thus user can type in directly every time it shows up.
In Constructor of your control:
this.Loaded += (sender, e) => Keyboard.Focus(txtUsername);
After trying combinations of the suggestions above, I was able to reliably assign focus to a desired text box on a child UserControl with the following. Basically, give focus to the child control and have the child UserControl give focus to its TextBox. The TextBox's focus statement returned true by itself, however did not yield the desired result until the UserControl was given focus as well. I should also note that the UserControl was unable to request focus for itself and had to be given by the Window.
For brevity I left out registering the Loaded events on the Window and UserControl.
Window
private void OnWindowLoaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
ControlXYZ.Focus();
}
UserControl
private void OnControlLoaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
TextBoxXYZ.Focus();
}
I set it in the PageLoaded() or control loaded, but then I'm calling WCF async service and doing stuff that seems to lose the focus. I have to to set it at the end of all the stuff I do. That's fine and all, but sometimes I make changes to the code and then I forget that I'm also setting the cursor.
I had same problem with setting keyboard focus to canvas in WPF user control.
My solution
In XAML set element to Focusable="True"
In element_mousemove event create simple check:
if(!element.IsKeyBoardFocused)
element.Focus();
In my case it works fine.