Book Image

MVVM Survival Guide for Enterprise Architectures in Silverlight and WPF

Book Image

MVVM Survival Guide for Enterprise Architectures in Silverlight and WPF

Overview of this book

MVVM (Model View View Model) is a Microsoft best practices pattern for working in WPF and Silverlight that is highly recommended by both Microsoft and industry experts alike. This book will look at the reasons for the pattern still being slow to become an industry standard, addressing the pain points of MVVM. It will help Silverlight and WPF programmers get up and running quickly with this useful pattern.MVVM Survival Guide for Enterprise Architectures in Silverlight and WPF will help you to choose the best MVVM approach for your project while giving you the tools, techniques, and confidence that you will need to succeed. Implementing MVVM can be a challenge, and this book will walk you through the main issues you will come across when using the pattern in real world enterprise applications.This book will help you to improve your WPF and Silverlight application design, allowing you to tackle the many challenges in creating presentation architectures for enterprise applications. You will be given examples that show the strengths and weaknesses of each of the major patterns. The book then dives into a full 3 tier enterprise implementation of MVVM and takes you through the various options available and trade-offs for each approach. During your journey you will see how to satisfy all the demands of modern WPF and Silverlight enterprise applications including scalability, testability, extensibility, and blendability.Complete your transition from ASP.NET and WinForms to Silverlight and WPF by embracing the new tools of these platforms, and the new design style that they allow for. MVVM Survival Guide for Enterprise Architectures in Silverlight and WPF will get you up to speed and ready to take advantage of this powerful new presentation platform.

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MVVM Survival Guide for Enterprise Architectures in Silverlight and WPF
Aug, 2012 | 490 pages
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Table of Contents (21 chapters)
MVVM Survival Guide for Enterprise Architectures in Silverlight and WPF
MVVM Survival Guide for Enterprise Architectures in Silverlight and WPF
Credits
Credits
Foreword
Foreword
About the Authors
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Presentation Patterns
Presentation Patterns
The Project Billing sample application
History of presentational patterns
Monolithic Project Billing sample
Summary
2
Introduction to MVVM
Introduction to MVVM
History
Structure
WPF and Silverlight enablers
MVVM project billing sample
Benefits of MVVM
Issues and pain points of MVVM
MVVM Light
Summary
3
Northwind – Foundations
Northwind – Foundations
Northwind requirements
Presentation tier foundation
Data access tier
Listing the customers
Adding tabs
Viewing customer details
Wiring up the customer list box
Summary
4
Northwind—Services and Persistence Ignorance
Northwind—Services and Persistence Ignorance
Adding a Service Layer
Integrating the Service Layer
Persistence ignorance and custom models
Summary
5
Northwind—Commands and User Inputs
Northwind—Commands and User Inputs
Pure MVVM
Making it easier with frameworks
Updating customer details
Gestures, events, and commands
Summary
6
Northwind—Hierarchical View Model and IoC
Northwind—Hierarchical View Model and IoC
Adding orders to customer details
Viewing order details
Summary
7
Dialogs and MVVM
Dialogs and MVVM
Should we make a compromise?
Dialog service
Mediators
Attached behaviors
Summary
8
Workflow-based MVVM Applications
Workflow-based MVVM Applications
WF for business rules execution
WF for controlling application flow
Summary
9
Validation
Validation
Validations and dependency properties
Error templates
Validation in MVVM-based applications
Error notifications
Summary
10
Using Non-MVVM Third-party Controls
Using Non-MVVM Third-party Controls
Using attached behaviors
Using binding reflector
readonly CLR properties (with no change notification support)
Using MVVM adapters
Summary
11
MVVM Application Performance
MVVM Application Performance
Asynchronous binding
Asynchronous View Model construction
Priority binding
Virtualization and paging
Using BackgroundWorker
Targeting system configuration
Event Throttling
Lazy Initialization
Summary
MVVM Frameworks
MVVM Frameworks
Binding at a Glance
Binding at a Glance
Basics
Validation
Static properties/fields
Executing code in DataContext
Binding to DataContext[DC]
Resources
Binding to resource
Updating source
Mode [Binding.Mode] [T:Target, S:Source]
Binding to other elements in the view
Conversion
Performance
Index
Index

Issues and pain points of MVVM

There are some issues and pain points to implementing MVVM which include the following:

  • Lack of direction from Microsoft: Microsoft hasn't given clear directions on this pattern yet, and the various non-Microsoft resources available on the topic can send mixed messages, leaving developers and architects confused.

  • Need for boilerplate code, complicated techniques and/or frameworks: There are many areas in WPF and Silverlight where MVVM support can be improved. Things like property changed notifications and commands require lots of boilerplate code and potentially brittle designs that require using "magic strings". There are many frameworks and techniques out there that help address these issues. However, you may not want to or may not be allowed to use open source frameworks. Also, implementing the techniques that allow you to avoid using the frameworks can be complicated and require a good bit of boilerplate code to implement, as you will see later in this...

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