Invoking Commands from ListView in MVVM - c#

I'm using Prism for Windows Runtime to wire up events in my Views with DelegateCommands in my ViewModels. I am wondering what would be the best way to invoke commands (e.g. select item) from a ListView that contains Buttons (or custom controls derived freom the Button class). I'd like to keep the effects (e.g. background change, tilt effect) provided by the Button control. But the button unfortunately absorbs the click events, which, in consequence, I cannot use in the ListView to hook up my commands e.g with the following XAML (and Behaviors SDK):
<ListView ItemsSource="{Binding AvailableItemsList}" SelectionMode="Single">
<ListView.ItemTemplate>
<DataTemplate>
<customControls:NavMenuButton Style="{StaticResource SelectionListMenuButton}" Content="{Binding Nickname}" DescriptionText="{Binding Name}" />
</DataTemplate>
</ListView.ItemTemplate>
<i:Interaction.Behaviors>
<core:EventTriggerBehavior EventName="SelectionChanged">
<core:InvokeCommandAction Command="{Binding ItemSelectedCommand}" />
</core:EventTriggerBehavior>
</i:Interaction.Behaviors>
</ListView>
What would be the best way to achieve this? I have found similar questions, but the difference here is that the controls in the list items are apparently "stealing" the click event (while it works just fine with e.g. a simple TextBlock).

To close this question, here is the solution based on MatDev8's comment above (thank you!):
<ListView x:Name="myListView" ItemsSource="{Binding AvailableItemsList}" SelectionMode="Single">
<ListView.ItemTemplate>
<DataTemplate>
<customControls:CustomTextButton Style="{StaticResource SelectionListMenuButton}"
Content="{Binding Nickname}"
DescriptionText="{Binding Name}"
Command="{Binding DataContext.ItemSelectedCommand, ElementName=myListView}"
CommandParameter="{Binding Name}"/>
</DataTemplate>
</ListView.ItemTemplate>
</ListView>

To have the commands binding in ListView you can use buttons within the ListView.
now for the clicking related issue you can modify your button's Controltemplate to make it look like a simple textblock. this way your clicking will also work on the listview and it will not be displayed as button.
<ControlTemplate TargetType="Button">
<TextBlock Text="{TemplateBinding Content}" />
</ControlTemplate>
You can also customize the click event in other way like moving focus to the button should also raise your click event(indirectly fire your command). This will help in your case of Listview where just moving to next item should also fire the command.

Related

How do I prevent a ToolBar in a nested UserControl from being focused when switching tabs?

I wrote an example application that highlights the issue, which might have to do with focus-scope because it's whenever a ToolBar is involved and a UserControl is unloaded when switching tabs.
The main window contains a Menu with a File->New command and a TabControl that displays a collection of "Box" instances:
<DockPanel>
<Menu DockPanel.Dock="Top">
<MenuItem Header="_File">
<MenuItem Command="New"/>
</MenuItem>
</Menu>
<TabControl ItemsSource="{Binding Boxes}">
<TabControl.ItemTemplate>
<DataTemplate>
<TextBlock Text="{Binding Name}" Width="40"/>
</DataTemplate>
</TabControl.ItemTemplate>
<TabControl.ContentTemplate>
<DataTemplate>
<local:BoxView/>
</DataTemplate>
</TabControl.ContentTemplate>
</TabControl>
</DockPanel>
Each "Box" instance has a Name property displayed in the tab header, and the rest of it is displayed in a "BoxView" UserControl. The "BoxView" has a ToolBar, the first button of which becomes the focus hog in the mentioned use case. The "BoxView" also displays a collection of "Compartments" that are inside each "Box" instance:
<StackPanel>
<ToolBarTray IsLocked="True">
<ToolBar>
<Button Content="Focus hog"/>
</ToolBar>
</ToolBarTray>
<ItemsControl ItemsSource="{Binding Compartments}">
<ItemsControl.ItemsPanel>
<ItemsPanelTemplate>
<WrapPanel/>
</ItemsPanelTemplate>
</ItemsControl.ItemsPanel>
<ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>
<DataTemplate>
<local:CompartmentView/>
</DataTemplate>
</ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>
</ItemsControl>
</StackPanel>
Each "Compartment" instance has a TotalValue property simply displayed in a TextBox in a "CompartmentView" UserControl:
<StackPanel>
<TextBox Text="{Binding TotalValue}"/>
</StackPanel>
And the problem is...
If I click on the TextBox of any one of the CompartmentView's, and then click a different tab of the main window, the first button of the ToolBar of the BoxView is focused (the focus hog one), disabling commands working in the main window.
It can be observed commands are disabled when opening the File menu. But after closing the menu and reopening, commands are enabled again.
How do I prevent the ToolBar in the nested UserControl from being focused when switching tabs?
Or perhaps I'm going at this wrong... how do I prevent focus from being set when switching tabs?
Update
The following link is a video on youtube where I explain the problem with the application.
https://youtu.be/0T5LK3CYxgw
Solution update
Thanks to themightylc for the answer, the issue was clearly a keyboard focus problem when the focused visual control (any selected "CompartmentView" or "BoxView" control) was unloaded while changing the selected tab in the TabControl. The solution was to focus on the TabControl itself in the main window whenever the tab selection changed:
private void TabControl_SelectionChanged(object sender, SelectionChangedEventArgs e)
{
(sender as TabControl).Focus();
}
Thanks also to Christoph Nahr's response for the solution on this msdn thread: https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/f5de6ffc-fa03-4f08-87e9-77bbad752033/a-focusscope-nightmare-bug-commands-are-disabled?forum=wpf
<Button Content="Focus hog" Focusable="False" />
This solves the problem you're having. Focusable is a DependencyProperty If you still want to access the ToolBar via Keyboard-Focus, you can bind it or set it from code-behind when the Tab-Switch is complete.
You can of course set it via Style so you don't have to set it on every element of the ToolBar.

"Bubbling" events from bound viewmodel goes to parent

First off, I'm still getting used to Caliburn and WPF, so I may be doing this the wrong way. I'd love to know a better way!
I have a Conductor shell view model, which has a view with some shared elements, and a content control for the ActiveItem. Now, I want a set of buttons from the ActiveItem view model to be displayed outside the content control, but still have their click events go to the active view model. I've tried adding an ItemsControl like this:
<ItemsControl x:Name="ActiveItem_Buttons">
<ItemsControl.ItemsPanel>
<ItemsPanelTemplate>
<StackPanel DockPanel.Dock="Right" Orientation="Horizontal" HorizontalAlignment="Right"/>
</ItemsPanelTemplate>
</ItemsControl.ItemsPanel>
<ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>
<DataTemplate>
<Button Content="{Binding Name}" Margin="10" Height="25" Width="80">
<i:Interaction.Triggers>
<i:EventTrigger EventName="Click">
<cal:ActionMessage MethodName="{Binding Name}" />
</i:EventTrigger>
</i:Interaction.Triggers>
</Button>
</DataTemplate>
</ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>
</ItemsControl>
(I'm doing the Interaction.Trigger part since I cannot bind to x:Name which would cause Caliburn to wire it automagically)
However, I get an exception stating that Caliburn cannot find a matching method. It seems like it starts bubbling the event from the shell view model, instead of the active item view model. How can I set the "starting point" of the event bubbling? I found and tried the attached property cal:View.Model="{Binding ActiveItem}", but that did not seem to help.
EDIT: For clarity: the Buttons property is defined on the view model base class ButtonScreenBase, and the shell inherits Conductor<ButtonScreenBase>
Rather don't use events and event handling in WPF, especially in conjunction with MVVM. Use the Command pattern instead. For user actions this means you can trigger Commands via gestures, clicks and other kind of user interaction events in the View and contain the business logic in the Command class/methods which is triggered in the ViewModel from the View, thus maintaining the separation of user interface logic and business logic.
I recommend this link for learning about Commands and how you can implement them (and MVVM from base principles) : http://kentb.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/mvvm-infrastructure-delegatecommand.html
update: went back to check some other posts about this particular problem, an explanation about the problem from the man himself.
Bind a Command to a Button inside a ListView with Caliburn.Micro
<Button Content="{Binding Name}" cal:Bind="{Binding}" Margin="10" Height="25" Width="80">
<i:Interaction.Triggers>
<i:EventTrigger EventName="Click">
<cal:ActionMessage MethodName="{Binding Name}" />
</i:EventTrigger>
</i:Interaction.Triggers>
</Button>
same thing it's an inherit issue with datatemplating.

ListView SelectItem Binding not working as expected

I have a fairly straight forward listview control for my Windows 8 XAML/C# application. I am binding the listview to a PersonList and that works correctly. However, what I'd like to do and haven't been able to find the answer for is I want the to click an item in the listview and be able to display the PersonSingle object to the other textboxes on the screen.
I've read some posts that indicate that the listview may not be the right control for this operation. Am I missing something in my listview that would allow me to do this operation or should I use a different control?
<ListView
x:Name="itemListView"
Visibility="Visible"
Width="auto"
Height="auto"
ItemsSource="{Binding PersonList, Mode=TwoWay}"
SelectedItem = "{Binding PersonSingle, Mode=OneWay}"
ItemTemplate="{StaticResource person80Template}"
SelectionMode="Single"
Grid.Row="1"
Grid.Column="1"
VerticalAlignment="Stretch">
<ListView.GroupStyle>
<GroupStyle>
<GroupStyle.HeaderTemplate>
<DataTemplate>
<Grid Margin="7,7,0,0">
<Button
AutomationProperties.Name="PersonValue"
Content="{Binding PersonName}"
Style="{StaticResource TextButtonStyle}"/>
</Grid>
</DataTemplate>
</GroupStyle.HeaderTemplate>
</GroupStyle>
</ListView.GroupStyle>
</ListView>
UPDATE:
So I figured out how to do it in a non-MVVM way (or at least not in a true MVVM way)
I added an ItemClick event to my ListView:
ItemClick="itemListView_ItemClick"
And then in the code behind I added the following:
private void itemListView_ItemClick(object sender, ItemClickEventArgs e)
{
VM.PersonSingle = ((Person)e.ClickedItem);
}
That works, but like I said, it doesn't feel very MVVM'ish. If you have any suggestions on how to make it work without having to manually set the PersonSingle object please answer below.
Your ItemClick solution is the right solution. You could create an attached behavior if you are opposed to handling events, but that's your choice.

Add adorner to bound children?

<ItemsControl Name="CanvasTableMap" ItemsSource="{Binding}" ItemsPanel="{DynamicResource ItemsPanelTemplate1}" ItemTemplate="{DynamicResource DataTemplate1}">
<ItemsControl.Resources>
<ItemsPanelTemplate x:Key="ItemsPanelTemplate1">
<WrapPanel Background="{DynamicResource ContentBackground}" />
</ItemsPanelTemplate>
<DataTemplate x:Key="DataTemplate1">
<Button Canvas.Left="100" Content="{Binding Name}" Template="{DynamicResource ButtonTableTemplate}"></Button>
</DataTemplate>
</ItemsControl.Resources>
</ItemsControl>
Here is my code.No problem with that. I have created an adorner and i would like to add an adorner for each button when i want. It is a little difficult as i dont know how to get the Buttons. CanvasTableMap.Items returns the Model so i dont know how to get access to the controls efficiently.
An easy way to do that is to define a handler for the Loaded event of the button, and add the adorner in that handler:
XAML
<Button Canvas.Left="100" Content="{Binding Name}" ... Loaded="Button_Loaded" />
Code-behind
private void Button_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
var button = (Button)sender;
var layer = AdornerLayer.GetAdornerLayer(button);
// Add the adorner
...
}
If you don't want to use code-behind, you can create an attached behavior (either with System.Windows.Interactivity or by creating an attached property)
You can use the ItemContainerGenerator to get the control created from the data (ContainerFromItem). Usually doing things that way is not such a good idea though.

Problem when setting up command bindings in XAML

I am trying to create a menu bar for my application. I have created a collection in xaml that I will contain menu items that my menu will bind to.
In xaml I have created an array that I use as my static resource for binding.
<coll:ArrayList x:Key="MenuOptionsList">
<model:DashboardMenuBarItem
Icon="the location of an image in my images folder"
DisplayName="The test that will appear under my button"
CommandName="someCommandInMyViewModel"/>
</coll:ArrayList>
I am using a listbox with a data template to show these items as follows.
<ListBox x:Name="lstNavigateTo" MinWidth="400" DockPanel.Dock="Top"
ItemsSource="{Binding Source={StaticResource MenuOptionsList}}"
ScrollViewer.HorizontalScrollBarVisibility="Disabled"
Style="{StaticResource horizontalListTemplate}">
<ListBox.ItemTemplate>
<DataTemplate>
<StackPanel Margin="5">
<Button Height="60" Width="60"
Command="{Binding Mode=OneWay, Path=CommandName}">
<Button.Content>
<Image Source="{Binding Path=Icon}" Grid.Row="0" />
</Button.Content>
</Button>
<TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=DisplayName}"
Width="100" TextAlignment="Center" Grid.Row="1" />
</StackPanel>
</DataTemplate>
</ListBox.ItemTemplate>
</ListBox>
My problem is that I am using the MVVM design pattern and cannot get the command bindings to work on the button click. Previously I would have managed the button click like this.
Command="{Binding someCommandInMyViewModel}"
That would work fine but when I try to bind a command to a property of an item in my collection the command will not fire.
Does anyone know how I can achieve this.
The CommandName property in your collection is of type String, whereas the Command property on Button is of type ICommand. In what way are you expecting WPF to resolve an ICommand from a String? You'll need to help it: either create a converter and use it in your binding, or change your CommandName property so that it contains an actual ICommand rather than a String.

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