I'm new to c# and mvvm.
I have a class that has many properties, and because of that, it is not possible to present every property to user in one page. Therefore, I decided to break the UI into 4 different part. I designed one user control for each of these parts.
As of now, I have 4 different user controls which are presented to user with the help of a side bar selection.
However, I still have one object to work with and it is not possible to break the object too.
The problem is I cant access to object from user controls' code behind. It means that I can bind object with UI but I'm not able to change parameters in code behind.
Welcome to SO!
On one hand you talk about MVVM and data-binding, but then on the other hand you talk about modifying changing parameters in code-behind. These are antithetical design patterns. Pick one!
If you are implementing MVVM then, as you know you have the View (UI e.g. Page1.xaml) in XAML, with code behind (Page1.xaml.cs) these then use a ViewModel (e.g. Page1ViewModel.cs) as their data context, i.e. where they can access the Model.
You do not have to have a one-to-one correlation of Views, ViewModels and Models.
You can have more than one View use the same ViewModel as its data context and you can have a ViewModel contain yet more ViewModels and a ViewModel can reference several Models if required.
So in your situation I'd have several pages reference the same ViewModel.
I currently have a Ribboncontrol on top of my main window. On the Ribboncontrol there are several RibbonPages and depending on which RibbonPage is selected I want to display below the RibbonControl a different IDE Layout that suits the need of the chosen RibbonPage.
Is my approach correct that I create different views/viewmodels for each IDE layout and that with each different RibbonPage that is selected a corresponding view/viewmodel is perused? I like to use this approach because then I would not need to communicate between views/viewmodels because the functionality in each RibbonPage is self-contained.
Each view would be a UserControl that encapsulates a DockLayoutManager. I included some screenshots below (SS1 = MainWindow onto which I want to load different views; SS2 = the view that represent a UserControl that in turn represents a DockLayoutManager with all associated LayoutPanels, DocumentPanels, ....)
Question: How would I go about implementing that and is that a workable solution to display different views as a function of the chosen RibbonPage?
It is common to display different view pages that relate to different functions and or tabs of a RibbonControl. Typically you'd have a base view model class that all of your view models extend and a property of that type in your parent view model... let's call it YourViewModelProperty. To change the view, you'd just need to set a new view model to that property:
YourViewModelProperty = new SomeDerivedViewModel()
You can link each UserControl to its related view model in DataTemplates declared in App.xaml. In this way, they'll all be available to every view in the application. You can find out more information regarding this method in my answer to the WPF - automatic view resolving for view model question here on Stack Overflow.
UPDATE >>>
There is a much better explanation available in my answer to the WPF MVVM navigate views question.
I have multiple of views (user controls), each with its own ViewModel. To navigate between them I am using buttons. Buttons display image and text from corresponding view model and also need column and row (because there are like 10 views: 10 columns with different number of rows each).
Right now buttons are created dynamically (I made a Navigator control for this) and for view models I have base class to hold text, image, column and row. Number of views available will be different (depends on user level and certain settings), that's why it's I need control here.
Question: how shall my control get data from view models?
Right now I have interface INavigator, defined in (lol) control itself. And view models implement it. I could go opposite, let my control to know about view models. Both looks wrong.
There is a single Navigator control what has, lets say, Items bound to a list of view models. It can cast each view model to INavigator or ViewModelBase (common for all pages) to obtain specific view model image, text, column and row. So either view model knows about control (to implement INavigator) or control knows about ViewModelBase.. And this is a problem, both solution bind tight control and view models, which is bad in mvvm.
Schematically
The way you've drawn your diagram answers your own question as to how you should structure the code for this.
What you need is one VM (let's call it MainVM) which contains an ObservableCollection<VMBase> of the other VMs (using your base type so that they can all happily live in the same collection).
Your View needs an ItemsControl (bound to your ObservableCollection<VMBase>) where you specify a DataTemplate for the Button using the properties exposed by the VMBase type only. Set the Command property in the Button to call SwitchCommand, CommandParameter is set to the item itself (i.e. {Binding .}).
Your View also needs a ContentControl bound to a SelectedVM property on MainVM which you can populate.
Implement SwitchCommand to set the SelectedVM property based on the value from the CommandParameter.
public void ExecuteSwitchCommand(object parameter)
{
var vmBase = parameter as VMBase;
if (vmBase != null)
SelectedVM = vmBase;
}
All properties mentioned here should be INotifyPropertyChanged enabled so that the View registers when they change and updates the UI.
To get the different UIs for the ContentControl, add type-specific DataTemplates for each of your specific VM types to the Resources file of your View (or if you're smart and are building a custom plug-in framework, merge the Resource Dictionaries).
A lot of people forget with MVVM that the whole point is that there is a purposeful separation of View from ViewModel, thus meaning you can potentially have many Views for a single ViewModel, which is what this demonstrates.
I find it's easiest to think of MVVM as a top-down approach... View knows about it's ViewModel, ViewModel knows about its Model, but Model does not know about its ViewModel and ViewModel does not know about its View.
I also find a View-first approach to development the easiest to work with, as UI development in XAML is static (has to be).
I think a lot of people get to wrapped up in 'making every component (M, V, VM) standalone and replaceable', myself included, but I've slowly come to the conclusion that is just counter-productive.
Technically, sure you could get very complicated and using IoC containers, create some ViewLocator object which binds a View-type to a ViewModel-type, but... what exactly does that gain you besides more confusion? It makes it honestly harder (because I've done this at one point) to develop because now you've lost design-time support first and foremost, among other things; and you're still either binding to a specific view model interface in your view or creating the binding at run-time. Why complicate it?
This article is a good read, and the first Note: explicitly talks about View vs. ViewModel. Hopefully, it will help you draw your own conclusions.
To directly answer your question, I think having your ViewModels implement an INavigator interface of some sort is probably ideal. Remember your VM is 'glue' between your view and model/business logic, its job is to transform business data into data that is consumable by your views, so it exists somewhere between both your UI and business layers.
This is why there are things like Messengers and View Services, which is where your navigator service on the ViewModels can fit in nicely.
I think the design has led to a no way out situation.
I believe that creating a custom button control where the dependency properties tie the image, the row and column actually provide a way for the page, which it resides on ,to get that information to them; whether they are dynamically created or not.
Continuing on with that thought. There is no MVVM logic applied to a custom control, the control contains what it needs to do its job and that is through the dependency properties as mentioned. Any functionality of the button should be done by commanding; all this makes the button data driven and robust enough to use in a MVVM methodology or not.
Question: how shall my control get data from view models?
There should only one viewmodel which is the page the control resides on. The control is simply bound to information which ultimately resides on that VM. How it gets there, that is up to the programmer. If the button is going to contain state data, that is bound from its dependency property in a two way fashion back to the item it is bound to.
By keeping VMs out of the buttons and only having one VM that is the best way to segregate and maintain the data. Unless I am really missing something here....
Same as others here I find it a bit hard to actually understand what you are asking, so this is quite general. The answer to the question header is simply: the Control gets the data from the ViewModel through bindings, always. You set the DataContext of your Control to the corresponding ViewModel, and from there you keep the ViewModel and the Control synchronized:
If you add an ItemsControl containing buttons to the View, you add an ObservableCollection<ButtonViewModel> to the ViewModel and bind the ItemsSource of the ItemsControl to this.
If you allow the user to dynamically add content to the View, the actual code that does it resides in the ViewModel, e.g. when the user clicks on a button "Add Button", you use the Command property to call a ViewModel method that adds a ButtonViewModel to the collection and the View will automatically reflect your changes.
There do exist complicated cases that are impossible to code exclusively in the ViewModel, I have found Behaviors to be the missing link there, but I'll get into that when you show me the specific case.
If you'd like to get a working example, please provide as much code as you can, with your exact expectations of what it should do.
I've searched around, but don't think I really found an answer. I'm trying to get a handle more on data binding and starting to see things coming together. Can you do data binding to something like "IsEnabled" based on TWO Properties, if so, how...
ex: A Window has some controls... certain controls may or may not be enabled at certain times. Some times it's as simple as when data is available (such as finding a record to edit), or when adding... I would consider this an "Editing" mode of the window. Sometimes, certain controls are only available when doing an Edit AND the user has admin permissions.
BOTH conditions need to be true for the control to be "enabled". Similarly could be applied to visibility of a control under similar conditions.
If you're using the MVVM model (which you really should if you're doing WPF development), then you're thinking about it the wrong way.
This sort of logic belongs in the ViewModel. You should have a single property on the ViewModel that represents the visiblity of the control (or controls) and have whatever logic is required (permissions, data validity, mode, etc.) in the ViewModel to determine this value. Putting the logic on the view hamstrings you and violates SOC.
The ViewModel is supposed to model your view. That is, there should (in most cases) be a 1:1 correlation between elements and concepts in your view (such as whether or not a feature is enabled or visible) and properties on your ViewModel.
You could use MultiBindings and some custom aggregate multi-value converters to achieve this declaratively. Alternatively, it may be more explicit (and therefore recommended) to place an additional property on your view model which compounds the values of the other view model properties.
I would like to use Model View Presenter pattern for a library containing user controls which will be used in other projects.
According to MVP I have to implement an IView-interface on a user control and pass it on to a Presenter-class.
In my case the consumers don't need access to the IView-contract.
But because the IView-interface is a public contract it means that consumers of the user control can also access its methods\properties and I want these to be only accessible for the Presenter.
What is a good way to accomplish this?
I've found a solution for my situation.
I make my IView-interfaces internal and implement them explicitly on the user controls.
This way the IView-interfaces is not part of the public interface of a user control which is what I need in my case.
I always consider User Controls tied to the Views not be a separate view themselves. They should be able to access any Presenter that the view they are tied can access but are not in themselves views. Rather they are part of a view and can be replace or altered without concern to the present if the UI changes.
In your specific example I would have the User control not implement any view interface. Instead I would just have the User Control Assembly reference the Presenter Assembly and have properties to allow access to the View Object that it is a part of.