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)

Learning how to communicate again

As we tend not to handle UI events directly, when using MVVM, we need alternative ways to implement the same functionality that they provide. Different methods are required to reproduce the functionality of different events. For example, the functionality of the SelectionChanged event of a collection control is typically reproduced by data binding a View Model property to the SelectedItem property of the collection control:

<ListBox ItemsSource="{Binding Items}" 
  SelectedItem="{Binding CurrentItem}" /> 

In this example, the setter of the CurrentItem property will get called by the WPF Framework each time a new item is selected from the ListBox. Therefore, instead of handling the SelectionChanged event in the code behind, we can call any method directly from the property setter in the View Model:

public TypeOfObject CurrentItem 
{ 
  get { return currentItem; } 
  set 
  { 
    currentItem = value; 
    DoSomethingWithTheNewlySelectedItem...