Article: Handling a Window's Closed and Closing events in the View-Model

This article discusses an attached behavior that lets you handle the View Window’s Closed and Closing events via commands in the View-Model. It was inspired by Reed Copsey, Jr.’s Blend behavior which is up on the Expression Code Gallery. Reed’s behavior uses a neat technique that lets the View-Model handle the Closing/Closed events of the View in an MVVM friendly manner. Since his code was tied to the Expression DLLs I thought it would be a good idea to write a plain WPF version. While similar in concept to the Blend behavior, I’ve slightly deviated from how the concept is implemented and also in how it’s used. So this is not a direct 1-to-1 replacement though you should be able to get things working pretty much the same without too much effort.

Article Link

• Article on The Code Project

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Article : EXIF Compare Utility using WPF

The Exif Compare Utility is a WinDiff equivalent for image files that compares the Exif meta-data and displays the differences and similarities. The application is written using WPF and MVVM, and also makes use of my ExifReader library. In the article I briefly explain how to use the application and also discuss some of the interesting code implementation details.

Article Link:

• EXIF Compare Utility using WPF on The Code Project

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Correction for the instant binding attached behavior for WPF TextBoxes

A few days back, I had blogged about an attached property I wrote to force instant binding in a WPF TextBox. Well it turns out I was having a “duh” moment there and this was pointed out to me very politely by Richard Deeming (a fellow CodeProject author). Turns out all I needed to do was to set the UpdateSourceTrigger on the Binding to PropertyChanged. In fact, this is the very example that’s on the MSDN documentation for UpdateSourceTrigger. Oh well, you live, you learn.

<TextBox Height="23"
    Text="{Binding EnteredName, UpdateSourceTrigger=PropertyChanged}"
    HorizontalAlignment="Left"
    Margin="144,64,0,0" Name="textBoxName"
    VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="152" />

I have updated the old blog entry and pointed it to this entry.

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Article : An MVVM friendly approach to adding system menu entries in a WPF application

The majority of MFC apps have always had an About… menu entry in the main window’s system menu, and this was primarily because the App Wizard generated code for that by default. I wanted to do something similar in a WPF application I’ve been working on, and I wanted to do it in an MVVM friendly manner. In this recent article published on The Code Project, I explain a neat way of doing it so that you can easily add menu items and attach command handlers to them while retaining the basic MVVM paradigm. The code supports command parameters as well as an UI enabling/disabling mechanism. The basic idea is to make it so that it should be very easy to add system menu-items and then bind commands to them without having to make major changes to code.

• Article on The Code Project

I was rather cynical about all the buzz around MVVM, but now that I’ve begun using it I can see why so many people are fascinated by the concept.

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An attached behavior for WPF TextBoxes to force instant binding

Update – Apr 9, 2010

You do not need to do all this – instead you just need to set UpdateSourceTrigger on the Binding to PropertyChanged. I’ve made an updated blog entry on this here : Correction for the instant binding attached behavior for WPF TextBoxes

Original entry follows for posterity

The default behavior for a TextBox is to invoke data binding when the TextBox loses focus. Normally this is fine since people do have to hit an OK button somewhere, but there are times when you’d prefer that databinding occurs as you type into the TextBox. I wrote an attached property for the TextBox which invokes data binding as you type into it, and not when the text box goes out of focus. Here’s how you would use it.

<TextBox Height="23"
  nsmvvm:TextInstantBindingBehavior.EnableInstantBinding="True"
  Text="{Binding EnteredName}" HorizontalAlignment="Left"
  Margin="144,64,0,0" Name="textBoxName"
  VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="152" />

Here’s the code for the attached property.

public class TextInstantBindingBehavior
{
    public static DependencyProperty EnableInstantBindingProperty =
      DependencyProperty.RegisterAttached(
          "EnableInstantBinding",
          typeof(bool), typeof(TextInstantBindingBehavior),
          new FrameworkPropertyMetadata(
              new PropertyChangedCallback(EnableInstantBindingChanged)));

    public static void SetEnableInstantBinding(TextBox target, bool value)
    {
        target.SetValue(
          TextInstantBindingBehavior.EnableInstantBindingProperty, value);
    }

    public static bool GetEnableInstantBinding(TextBox target)
    {
        return (bool)target.GetValue(EnableInstantBindingProperty);
    }

    private static void EnableInstantBindingChanged(
        DependencyObject target, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
    {
        TextBox element = target as TextBox;

        if (element != null)
        {
            if (e.NewValue != null && (bool)e.NewValue)
            {
                element.TextChanged += Element_TextChanged;
            }
            else
            {
                element.TextChanged -= Element_TextChanged;
            }
        }
    }

    static void Element_TextChanged(object sender, TextChangedEventArgs e)
    {
        TextBox textBox = (TextBox)sender;

        if (GetEnableInstantBinding(textBox))
        {
            BindingExpression bindingExpression =
              textBox.GetBindingExpression(TextBox.TextProperty);

            if (bindingExpression != null)
            {
                bindingExpression.UpdateSource();
            }
        }
    }
}

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