Book Image

Learn WinUI 3 - Second Edition

By : Alvin Ashcraft
5 (2)
Book Image

Learn WinUI 3 - Second Edition

5 (2)
By: Alvin Ashcraft

Overview of this book

WinUI 3 takes a whole new approach to delivering Windows UI components and controls and has the ability to deliver the same features across multiple versions of Windows. Learn WinUI 3 is a comprehensive introduction to WinUI and Windows apps for anyone who is new to WinUI and XAML applications. This updated second edition begins by helping you get to grips with the latest features in WinUI and shows you how XAML is used in UI development. The next set of chapters will help you set up a new Visual Studio environment, develop a new desktop project, incorporate the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern in a WinUI project, and develop unit tests for ViewModel commands. Next, you’ll cover the basics of data access from WinUI projects with a step-by-step approach. As you advance, you’ll discover how to leverage the Fluent Design System to design beautiful WinUI applications. You’ll also explore the contents and capabilities of the Windows Community Toolkit and learn how to create cross-platform apps with markup and code from your project using Uno Platform. The concluding chapters will teach you how to build, debug, and deploy apps to the Microsoft Store. By the end of this book, you’ll have learned how to build WinUI applications from scratch and how to modernize existing desktop apps using WinUI 3 and the Windows App SDK.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Part 1:Introduction to WinUI and Windows Applications
8
Part 2:Extending WinUI and Modernizing Applications
13
Part 3:Build and Deploy on Windows and Beyond

XAML basics

It’s time to start building the main screen of the My Media Collection application. The focal point of the application will be the media items in the collection. To display that list, we are going to need a few things, as follows:

  • A Model class that defines an item in the collection
  • Some code to bind the collection of items to the UI
  • A XAML control to display the items

Building the model

We will start by building the model for the My Media Collection application. A model defines an entity and its attributes. Earlier in the chapter, we discussed some of the items’ attributes we want to display in the UI. To display and (eventually) persist this information, we must create the model.

The initial version of our model will consist of two enumerations (ItemType and LocationType) in an Enums folder, and two classes (Medium and MediaItem) in a Model folder, as illustrated in the following screenshot:

Figure 2.7 – Solution Explorer displays the new Model and Enum files

Figure...