Commands are disabled in WPF application when data source is empty - wpf

I have a simple WPF with a menu, a toolbar and a ListView in a GridView. The menu and toolbar actions are bound to commands.
I have <CommandBinding> that defines when commands should be executed (CanExecute). Some commands, such as "Create New Item" should always be executed, so they are bound to a "e.CanExecute = true;" function.
However, when the user selects all items in the list using Ctrl-A, and then presses Delete, my application runs a BackgroundWorker that deletes the items from the server and then sets the ItemsSource of the list view to the new data collection, which is empty.
This sometimes causes all commands in the menu and toolbar to be disabled. Note that their keyboard shortcuts still work, but the actions are disabled in the menu and toolbar.
This doesn't always happen, and I failed to find a rule to when it does happen.
Did anyone run into a similar behavior or has any idea what might cause it?
Thanks.

Without code it may be hard. It looks like CanExecute() is not called. Set breakpoint in it and check. I assume you are using RoutedCommands. If yes, the problem may appear because MenuItem.CommandTarget is not set, and WPF tries to find CommandBindings somewhere up the tree, beyond your actual command bindings. If this is the case, set CommandTarget to proper value. Also you may want to call CommandManager.InvalidateRequerySuggested() and see what happens.

Related

Detect unpost of ttk::combobox

I have a Tcl/Tk program. In it I have a combobox, like so:
set cb [ttk::combobox .cb -state readonly -textvariable selection -postcommand [list choices .cb]]
The proc choices runs when the combobox posts, which is what I want. My question is, how do I detect when the combobox unposts?
I've tried both binding on <<ComboboxSelected>> and setting a variable trace on selection. The problem with each is that they only fire when the user actually changes the selection. I need some way to always detect when the combobox unposts.
Thanks!
edit
What I'm trying to accomplish: When the combobox posts it presents the user with a list of options. I don't expect the user to know what the options mean, therefor I am highlighting the options visually in a different area of my program. I have this highlighting triggering and working well with -postcommand. The issue is to know when to turn the highlighting back off.
<<ComboboxSelected>> doesn't fire if the user doesn't change the selected value.
<Leave> and <FocusOut> fire too soon (e.g. as soon as the box posts).
The combobox's popdown is actually its own nest of windows, and if your combobox is called .cb then the popdown has the imaginative name .cb.popdown (note that this implementation and is not guaranteed). If you add a binding to that widget's <Unmap> event you'll get to see the unposting; <Unmap> events are exactly the notifications sent when a window ceases to be displayed in the virtual desktop layer sense (as opposed to just ceasing to be visible, say because there's another window on top; there's events for that too, but they're not cross-platform).
The tricky bits:
The popdown is usually created when needed, i.e., the first time it appears. You need the window to exist (but not necessarily be visible) before you bind to it. You can get the handle of the popdown widget with ttk::combobox::PopdownWindow, which will make the widget if it doesn't already exist. (It's part of the implementation, but it is more likely to be stable than the name.)
set popdown [ttk::combobox::PopdownWindow .cb]
bind $popdown <Unmap> {yourCallback %W}
It is possible to dig around within the internal arrangement of the popdown, but I don't recommend it; it's much more likely to change without warning.
Binding to the toplevel has the usual issues with events also being delivered for subwindows. Your callback should check that the event it has been given is actually for the toplevel:
proc yourCallback {w} {
if {$w ne [winfo toplevel $w]} { return }
# The rest of your code here...
}
The window name of the listbox used by ttk::combobox is:
set popdown [ttk::combobox::PopdownWindow .combobox].f.l
I believe this is what you need.
bind <Leave> $popdown mycommand

Avoid second click in silverlight button MVVM

I've seen I have a problem with several users that use to double-click in buttons.
I have several buttons bound to commands that launch many actions.
For example there are two windows that communicate between them through a mediator so when I click "close the other window", the bound command sends a "CloseTheOtherWindowMessage". The problem is that when a user makes double click it tries to close the window a second time and, as expected, it crashes.
I've tried to set the window BusyIndicator as IsBusy when I press the button but my finger is quicker than MVVM and it still let me double-click before it starts showing the BusyIndicator.
I've found many examples of how to only admit double click in MVVM using interaction.Behaviors but I want just the opposite. Is there any example or other good and general solution for this problem?
Why is it "as expected" when it crashes? A crash should never be "as expected".
Your finger shouldn't be "quicker than MVVM". The Dispatcher thread always acts deterministically and sequentially. Do you use a multi-threaded approach?
In the command's Execute method or handler, raise its CanExecuteChanged event, and the binding engine will immediately call CanExecute(...). Make it so that this method will return false the second time. Maybe use a timer, or, better yet, you can logically determine by your view model state alone that the action is not possible right now (i.e. because IsOtherStuffAvailable is currently false).

Wpf forcing a MenuItem to create it's Children

I have a c# wpf question.
I am binding a MenuItem to list that is dynamic. Every object on the list is a new sub MenuItem to the main one.
All the items are Checkable and implement the events of checked and unchecked.
The problem is that even before the first opening of the main MenuItem by the user I want the checked and unchecked events to appear (they seem to apear only the first time the user opens the main MenuItem even though add items are added to the binded list before that).
I can do it manually (even though It looks horrible) but when the main MenuItem opens up for the first time the events are called also, and it creates a mess.
So basiclly I need a way to "force" the main MenuItem to create it's children when I tell it to so that the checked and unchecked events will work.
I have tried everything, and even UpdateLayout did not work. Even when I open the menu from the WindowLoaded evet I need to keep it open even after the end of the event and only than it creates the childrens (I thought I could open it and close it real fast so it will be unnoticed to the user).
I hope my question was clear enough.
I thank you in advance. :-)
Since it is an event on the menu it kind of makes sense. When you say manually what are you doing? I would just create a helper and call it on load and by the event. Create a private List Bool to store the status of the check and only run the real event code if the status changes.

WPF - Why isn't Keyboard.Focus() working?

have a TextBox item (MyTextBox) on a TabItem control. I have code that looks as follows:
MyTextBox.Focus();
Keyboard.Focus(MyTextBox);
When I run this code through the debugger I see the following after the lines are executed:
MyTextBox.IsFocused = true
MyTextBox.IsKeyboardFocused = false
Can anyone tell me why the textbox isn't receiving keyboard focus? It's just a standard TextBox control that is enabled.
When you try to set Focus to an element besides the things enumerated above by our coleague, you must also know that WPF does not allow cross threaded operations.
In some cases this exception is not raised like in the Focus method call case. What I've done to fix this issue is to call all the code that involves Keyboards focus in an action.
This action is ran inside the control dispatcher to make sure that my code is not being executed from another thread than the UI thread (e.g. timer event or an event raised from another thread):
[UIElement].Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(
new Action(
delegate{
/// put your Focus code here
}
)
);
MyTextBox.IsKeyboardFocused is false because you are looking at it under debugger and the keyboard focus is probably in your Visual Studio... Try debugging focus without breakpoints (e.g. Debug.Write or trace brakepoints) to see actual values of MyTextBox.IsKeyboardFocused in runtime.
Also notice that Focus() method returns boolean value that indicates whether focus was successfully set. Does it return False in your case? If yes, I would suggest stepping into Focus() method in order to find out what is wrong.
3 important properties must be true: IsVisible="True", Focusable="True". IsEnabled="True".
To be focusable, Focusable and IsEnabled must both be true.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.uielement.focus.aspx
The accepted answer here does not solve the problem of textboxes who dont gain focus, no matter what the debugger tells you. If you have and can write to your textbox, then you have it keyboard-focused.
I found this here solving the problem (and actually gaining focus, not just settings the values so it looks like focus in the debugger), it comes very close to Pavlov's answer but with the "Focus code" : Keyboard.Focus does not work on text box in WPF
This worked for me (had to do UpdateLayout, otherwise Focus() didn't work immediately after changing tab from script)
tabControl.SelectedIndex = 2;
this.UpdateLayout();
txtMyTextBox.Focus();
It's important where your first two lines of code are executed.
If they are in an event handler that relates to the user pressing a key, using the mouse, altering the visibility of a control, or otherwise taking an action that might have an impact on focus, I find manually calling Focus() often doesn't work.
My theory is that internally, WPF operates as follows:
User or code takes action which could have an impact on focus, e.g. a TextBox control becomes enabled inside a focus scope which previously had no focusable control.
WPF notifies various event handlers, including yours which calls Focus().
WPF updates focus based on the state changes in step 1. This overrides whatever you did in step 2.
That is why this answer suggests to call your Focus() in a queued callback which will be executed after step 3.
Side note: you don't need to call both UIElement.Focus and Keyboard.Focus since the first includes the second (at least if you trust the Microsoft docs).
In conclusion, replace your first two lines of code with this:
// using System.Windows.Threading;
Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(DispatcherPriority.Input, MyTextBox.Focus);

WPF Focus In Tab Control Content When New Tab is Created

I've done a lot of searching on SO and google around this problem, but can't seem to find anything else to try.
I have a MainView (window) that contains a tab control. The tab control binds to an ObservableCollection of ChildViews (user controls). The MainView's ViewModel has a method that allows adding to the collection of ChildViews, which then creates a new tab. When a new tab is created, it becomes the active tab, and this works fine. This method on the MainView is called from another ViewModel (OtherViewModel).
What I am trying to do is set the keyboard focus to the first control on the tab (an AutoCompleteBox from WPFToolkit*) when a new tab is created. I also need to set the focus the same way, but WITHOUT creating a new tab (so set the focus on the currently active tab).
(*Note that there seem to be some focus problems with the AutoCompleteBox--even if it does have focus you need to send a MoveNext() to it to get the cursor in its window. I have worked around this already).
So here's the problem. The focusing works when I don't create a new tab, but it doesn't work when I do create a new tab. Both functions use the same method to set focus, but the create logic first calls the method that creates a new tab and sets it to active. Code that sets the focus (in the ChildView's Codebehind):
IInputElement element1 = Keyboard.Focus(autoCompleteBox);
//plus code to deal with AutoCompleteBox as noted.
In either case, the Keyboard.FocusedElement starts out as the MainView. After a create, calling Keyboard.Focus seems to do nothing (focused element is still the MainView). Calling this without creating a tab correctly sets the keyboard focus to autoCompleteBox.
Any ideas?
Update:
Bender's suggestion half-worked.
So now in both cases, the focused element is correctly the AutoCompleteBox. What I then do is MoveNext(), which sets the focus to a TextBox. I have been assuming that this Textbox is internal to the AutoCompleteBox, as the focus was correctly set on screen when this happened. Now I'm not so sure. This is still the behavior I see when this code gets hit when NOT doing a create. After a create, MoveNext() sets the focus to an element back in my MainView.
The problem must still be along the lines of Bender's answer, where the state of the controls is not the same depending on whether a new tab was created or not. Any other thoughts?
Final Update
As noted, majocha's suggestion worked.
I wanted to update this in case anyone happened upon this same problem with the AutoCompleteBox. It appears that setting focus does not activate it in the UI--you need to do a MoveNext on it to move focus forward once to the control's internal Textbox. This is based on my debugging experience, which may not be 100% scientific. If I have time, I will attempt to create a small repro project and submit it to the WPFToolkit team.
You can try defering the focus change with
Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(MyChangeFocusAction, DispatcherPriority.ContextIdle);
It will get queued after layout and properties updates are done.
I don't think it's best practice, but it works for me.
The control must be visible to be focused, you may try to defer focusing by subscribing to the IsVisibleChanged event, something similar to the following should work:
public static void setFocusLate(this Control control)
{
DependencyPropertyChangedEventHandler handler = null;
handler = delegate
{
control.Focus();
control.IsVisibleChanged -= handler;
};
control.IsVisibleChanged += handler;
}

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