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)

Avoiding UI-based validation errors

In our last example from the previous section, we data bound the whole Validation.Errors collection to a tooltip in the error template for our TextBox control. We also data bound our own Errors collection from our base class to the ItemsControl element above the form fields.

Our Errors collection can display all of the errors for all of the properties in each data Model. However, the Validation.Errors collection has access to UI-based validation errors that never make it back to the View Models. Take a look at the following example:

The UI-based validation error says Value '0t' could not be converted, and that explains why the View Models never see this error. The type of value expected in the data bound property is decimal, but an unconvertible value has been entered. Therefore, the input value cannot be converted to a valid decimal number and so, the data bound value is never updated.

However, the Validation.Errors collection is a UI element...