Book Image

Mastering Windows Presentation Foundation - Second Edition

By : Sheridan Yuen
Book Image

Mastering Windows Presentation Foundation - Second Edition

By: Sheridan Yuen

Overview of this book

Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) provides a rich set of libraries and APIs for developers to create engaging user experiences. This book features a wide range of examples, from simple to complex, to demonstrate how to develop enterprise-grade applications with WPF. This updated second edition of Mastering Windows Presentation Foundation starts by introducing the benefits of using the Model-View-View Model (MVVM) software architectural pattern with WPF, then moves on, to explain how best to debug our WPF applications. It explores application architecture, and we learn how to build the foundation layer of our applications. It then demonstrates data binding in detail, and examines the various built-in WPF controls and a variety of ways in which we can customize them to suit our requirements. We then investigate how to create custom controls, for when the built-in functionality in WPF cannot be adapted for our needs. The latter half of the book deals with polishing our applications, using practical animations, stunning visuals and responsive data validation. It then moves on, to look at improving application performance, and ends with tutorials on several methods of deploying our applications.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)

Debunking the myth about code behind

One of the great misconceptions about MVVM is that we should avoid putting any code into the code behind files of our Views. While there is some truth to this, it is certainly not true in all situations. If we think logically for a moment, we already know that the main reason to use MVVM is to take advantage of the Separation of Concerns that its architecture provides. Part of this separates the business functionality in the View Model from the user interface-related code in the Views. Therefore, the rule should really be that we should avoid putting any business logic into the code behind files of our Views.

Keeping this in mind, let's look at what code we might want to put into the code behind file of a View. The most likely suspects would be some UI-related code, maybe handling a particular event, or launching a child window of some kind. In these cases, using the code behind file would be absolutely fine. We have no business-related code here...