WPF User Control with Tab Control - c#

I'm attempting to create a user control that houses a tab control.
My question is, how do I expose the tab control through the user control so we can add tabs?
The entire control will house three areas: command buttons at the top, the tab control, and a styled textblock that displays messages.
The command buttons will be configurable as dependencyproperties, so we may choose to show the apply button or not when we use the usercontrol. I'm strictly a designer and not a developer, so I'm trying to get my feet wet in building this control, but I'm in a little over my head.
I have no problem whipping up the XAML for what I'm trying to accomplish, just having a hard time making it reusable.
More details on what I have tried so far (haven't tried anything in the answers just yet).
I attempted to add a dependencyproperty that would expose the collection for the tabcontrol itemssource:
public IEnumerable<object> TabSource
{
get { return (IEnumerable<object>)GetValue(TabSourceProperty); }
set { base.SetValue(FunctionPanel.TabSourceProperty, value); }
}
public static DependencyProperty TabSourceProperty = DependencyProperty.Register(
"TabSource",
typeof(IEnumerable<object>),
typeof(FunctionPanel));
And then bind to it in the user control XAML:
<TabControl Grid.Row="1" ItemsSource="{Binding TabSource}" />
Finally, I would like to use it in the window XAML like so:
<local:FunctionPanel>
<local:FunctionPanel.TabSource>
<TabItem Header="Test" />
</local:FunctionPanel.TabSource>
</local:FunctionPanel>
But this returns TabSource is unrecognizable or unaccessible. I will attempt the solutions provided below.

My question is, how do I expose the tab control through the user control so we can add tabs?
One straight forward option would be adding a public method to the user control:
public void AddTab(string header)
{
this.tabControl.Items.Add(header);
}
another option would be to expose the Items property on the user control:
public ItemCollection Items
{
get { return this.tabControl.Items; }
}

I provide you with a sample to open a Page inside a Tab Control , hope it helps :
public void OpenTabForm(Page oPage)
{
try
{
Frame oFrame = new Frame();
oFrame.Content = oPage;
TabItem myItem = new TabItem();
myItem.Header = oPage.Name; //give the header text
myItem.Content = oFrame;
tbtabMain.Items.Add(myItem);
tbtabMain.SelectedItem = myItem;
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
//handle error
}
}

Related

How can I display the ToolTip of several control elements of a UserControl in a TextBox of another UserControl?

I'm new to this forum and have been trying to teach myself WPF programming for a short time. I am currently trying to redirect several ToolTip texts from one UserControl to a TextBox from another UserControl. In my MainWindow I show the "Button_with_ToolTip_UserControl.xaml" in Grid.Row="0" and the "Textbox_For_Tooltip_UserControl.xaml" in Grid.Row="1" below. The ToolTip of the upper control elements of my UserControl "Button_with_ToolTip_UserControl.xaml" should be displayed in the TextBox below which was created in the UserControl "Textbox_For_Tooltip_UserControl.xaml". I tried the ToolTipOpening event. This event is also called, but I don't know how to get the text of the ToolTip.
In my "Button_with_ToolTip_UserControl.xaml.cs" I put the event and tried something like that:
public partial class Button_with_ToolTip_UserControl : UserControl
{
private string _toolTipText;
private Button_with_ToolTip_ViewModel currentToolTip = new Button_with_ToolTip_ViewModel();
public Button_with_ToolTip_UserControl()
{
InitializeComponent();
}
private void Button_ToolTipOpening(object sender, ToolTipEventArgs e)
{
_toolTipText = e.OriginalSource.ToolTip.Text;
currentToolTip.CurrentToolTipText=_toolTipText;
}
}
With "_toolTipText = e.OriginalSource.ToolTip.Text;" I tried to get the ToolTip text to set it to the CurrentToolTipText property. But that's not how it works in terms of syntax. But unfortunately I did not find out how to do it.
Can someone help me with my project or give me a tip. Or is that generally a bad practice?

Implementing an options dialog

in my application i want to implement an options dialog like you have in VisualStudios if you go to Tools->Options in the menubar. How can i do this? My first idea was to use pages and navigation but maybe there's an easier approach?
It's probably not the easiest way but I wrote this snippet that match your goal and it's a good exercise.
In an empty Windows Forms project add a ListBox (listBox1) and a Panel (panel1). Then create 2 UserControls (UserControl1 and UserControl2), these will be the content that is shown when you click the list.
In your Form1 class we create a ListItem class that will contain your menu options as such:
public partial class Form1 : Form
{
public class ListItem
{
public string Text { get; set; }
public UserControl Value { get; set; }
public ListItem(string text, UserControl value)
{
Text = text;
Value = value;
}
};
...
}
After that you add items to the ListBox right after InitializeComponent() in Form1:
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
listBox1.DisplayMember = "Text";
listBox1.ValueMember = "Value";
listBox1.Items.Add(new ListItem("Item1", new UserControl1()));
listBox1.Items.Add(new ListItem("Item2", new UserControl2()));
}
This will make it so when you use listBox1.SelectedItem it will return an object that you can cast to a ListItem and access the associated UserControl.
To make use of this behaviour, go to designmode and double-click the ListBox, this'll add code for the SelectedIndexChanged event. We use this event to display the UserControl in the Panel panel1. This will clear any old Panel content and add a selected UserControl:
private void listBox1_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
panel1.Controls.Clear();
UserControl control = (listBox1.SelectedItem as ListItem).Value;
if(control != null)
{
panel1.Controls.Add(control);
control.Dock = DockStyle.Fill;
}
}
I suggest you try adding a button or something to differentiate the UserControls and play around. Have fun! :)
You should create a new Window and show that as opposed to create a page and navigate to it. Then you would call .show() on the new window for it to show.
Then you would change the look of the new window to however you want, the same as editing pages.
If you build your options into a full object model that matches the structure of the options window, then the best way is to use whatever navigation-aware UI binding that your MVVM toolkit uses. The options window would start off as a new root level window to which you would bind the root of your options data model.
So, in short think of the options dialog as a mini-application that uses the same structure as your main MVVM application, but with a different data model root.
If you plan to allow the user to cancel the changes to the options, then you would want your options data model to be clonable so that you can populate the options window with the clone and then swap out the real options with the new data if the user presses OK on the options window. If they select cancel you can just throw the cloned object away and destroy the window.

WPF, detect which Tab you are navigating AWAY from

I have a WPF application with multiple tabs. Under each tab, a user can change some settings (using CheckBoxes, TextBoxes, etc) and then the user must click the "Update" button in order to save those settings. Everything works fine but one of requirements is to alert the user if he tries to switch to other tab without clicking the "Update" button.
So I'm trying to use the
TabItem_LostFocus
event handler to achieve it but this event is triggered every time I click on something within the tab. I guess I can patch this issue by placing
e.Handled = true
for every control I have but this doesn't sound like an elegant solution (especially when I don't have click event handlers for everything under my tabs). Is there some other way to determine when you are switching away from the current tab?
Thank you
To achieve your requirement, you just need to data bind to the TabControl.SelectedIndex or the TabControl.SelectedItem properties:
<TabControl ItemsSource="{Binding TabItemCollection}"
SelectedItem="{Binding SelectedTabItem}" />
Then in your view model or code behind:
private YourDataType selectedItem;
public YourDataType SelectedItem
{
get { return selectedItem; }
set
{
// selectedItem represents the previous TabItem
// value represents the new TabItem
selectedItem = value;
}
}
You can bind to the IsSelected property of each TabItem.. and then do your checking inside the setter
<TabControl>
<TabItem IsSelected="{Binding TabItem1IsSelected}"/>
</TabControl>
Property:
public bool TabItem1IsSelected
{
get { return _tabItem1IsSelected; }
set
{
if (_tabItem1IsSelected)
{
if (!value)
{
// Check to see if user has updated
if (!userUpdated)
{
value = true;
}
}
}
_tabItem1IsSelected = value;
RaisePropertyChanged();
}
}

How to bind Windows Form Control to a "Grid" Panel using MVVM in WPF

I am attempting to use MVVM to Bind a Windows Form Control to a panel in WPF. My overall objective is to be able to dynamically change which specific Windows Form Control I will use as I plan on having potentially several available.
Right now, I have been able to get this to work by having the application launch a callback on initialization which accesses the grid object by name. Here is how XAML currently looks:
<Grid Name="WindowsControlObject"></Grid>
The Callback looks like the following:
private void WindowLoaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
System.Windows.Forms.Integration.WindowsFormsHost host =
new System.Windows.Forms.Integration.WindowsFormsHost();
System.Windows.Forms.Control activeXControl = new SomeWindowsControl();
host.Child = activeXControl;
this.WindowsControlObject.Children.Add(host);
}
While this works, I am trying to fully utilize the MVVM pattern, as such is there a way I can do something like the following in the XAML/ModelView:
XAML:
<Grid Content="{Binding WindowsControl"></Grid>
In my ModelView:
public class MyModelView
{
public Grid WindowsControl;
public MyModelView{
WindowsControl = new Grid;
System.Windows.Forms.Integration.WindowsFormsHost host =
new System.Windows.Forms.Integration.WindowsFormsHost();
System.Windows.Forms.Control activeXControl = new SomeWindowsControl();
host.Child = activeXControl;
WindowsControl.WindowsControlObject.Children.Add(host);
}
}
Am I even right in my exploration/possible approach? It has occurred to me that I might need to use some other type of panel (other than grid), but haven't found anything obvious yet. If it can't be done, I have a solution, just not a very clean one.
Doing more digging, it turns out that I really wanted to bind this to a "ContentControl" tag, as follows:
XAML:
<ContentControl Content="{Binding WindowsControl}"/>
ViewModel:
private System.Windows.Forms.Control _myControl;
public WindowsFormsHost STKObject
{
get
{
return new WindowsFormsHost() { Child = _myControl};
}
}

Binding a UserControl to a custom BusyIndicator control

I have a requirement to focus on a specific textbox when a new view is loaded.
The solution was to add this line of code to the OnLoaded event for the view:
Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(() => { NameTextBox.Focus(); });
So this worked for one view, but not another. I spent some time debugging the problem and realized that the new view I was working on had a BusyIndicator that takes focus away from all controls since the BusyIndicator being set to true and false was occuring after the OnLoaded event.
So the solution is to call focus to the NameTextBox after my BusyIndicator has been set to false. My idea was to create a reusable BusyIndicator control that handles this extra work. However, I am having trouble doing this in MVVM.
I started by making a simple extension of the toolkit:BusyIndicator:
public class EnhancedBusyIndicator : BusyIndicator
{
public UserControl ControlToFocusOn { get; set; }
private bool _remoteFocusIsEnabled = false;
public bool RemoteFocusIsEnabled
{
get
{
return _remoteFocusIsEnabled;
}
set
{
if (value == true)
EnableRemoteFocus();
}
}
private void EnableRemoteFocus()
{
if (ControlToFocusOn.IsNotNull())
Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(() => { ControlToFocusOn.Focus(); });
else
throw new InvalidOperationException("ControlToFocusOn has not been set.");
}
I added the control to my XAML file with no problem:
<my:EnhancedBusyIndicator
ControlToFocusOn="{Binding ElementName=NameTextBox}"
RemoteFocusIsEnabled="{Binding IsRemoteFocusEnabled}"
IsBusy="{Binding IsDetailsBusyIndicatorActive}"
...
>
...
<my:myTextBox (this extends TextBox)
x:Name="NameTextBox"
...
/>
...
</my:EnhancedBusyIndicator>
So the idea is when IsRemoteFocusEnabled is set to true in my ViewModel (which I do after I've set IsBusy to false in the ViewModel), focus will be set to NameTextBox. And if it works, others could use the EnhancedBusyIndicator and just bind to a different control and enable the focus appropriately in their own ViewModels, assuming their views have an intial BusyIndicator active.
However, I get this exception when the view is loaded:
Set property 'foo.Controls.EnhancedBusyIndicator.ControlToFocusOn' threw an exception. [Line: 45 Position: 26]
Will this solution I am attempting work? If so, what is wrong with what I have thus far (cannot set the ControlToFocusOn property)?
Update 1
I installed Visual Studio 10 Tools for Silverlight 5 and got a better error message when navigating to the new view. Now I gete this error message:
"System.ArgumentException: Object of type System.Windows.Data.Binding cannot be converted to type System.Windows.Controls.UserControl"
Also, I think I need to change the DataContext for this control. In the code-behind constructor, DataContext is set to my ViewModel. I tried adding a DataContext property to the EnhancedBusyIndicator, but that did not work:
<my:EnhancedBusyIndicator
DataContext="{Binding RelativeSource={RelativeSource Self}}"
ControlToFocusOn="{Binding ElementName=NameTextBox}"
RemoteFocusIsEnabled="{Binding IsRemoteFocusEnabled}"
IsBusy="{Binding IsDetailsBusyIndicatorActive}"
...
>
Update 2
I need to change UserControl to Control since I will be wanting to set focus to TextBox objects (which implement Control). However, this does not solve the issue.
#Matt, not sure
DataContext="{Binding RelativeSource={RelativeSource Self}}"
will work in Silverlight 5, have you tried binding it as a static resource?
Without a BusyIndicator present in the view, the common solution to solve the focus problem is to add the code
Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(() => { ControlToFocusOn.Focus(); });
to the Loaded event of the view. This actually works even with the BusyIndicator present; however, the BusyIndicator immediately takes focus away from the rest of the Silverlight controls. The solution is to invoke the Focus() method of the control after the BusyIndicator is not busy.
I was able to solve it by making a control like this:
public class EnhancedBusyIndicator : BusyIndicator
{
public EnhancedBusyIndicator()
{
Loaded += new RoutedEventHandler(EnhancedBusyIndicator_Loaded);
}
void EnhancedBusyIndicator_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
AllowedToFocus = true;
}
private readonly DependencyProperty AllowedToFocusProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("AllowedToFocus", typeof(bool), typeof(EnhancedBusyIndicator), new PropertyMetadata(true));
public bool AllowedToFocus
{
get { return (bool)GetValue(AllowedToFocusProperty); }
set { SetValue(AllowedToFocusProperty, value); }
}
public readonly DependencyProperty ControlToFocusOnProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("ControlToFocusOn", typeof(Control), typeof(EnhancedBusyIndicator), null);
public Control ControlToFocusOn
{
get { return (Control)GetValue(ControlToFocusOnProperty); }
set { SetValue(ControlToFocusOnProperty, value); }
}
protected override void OnIsBusyChanged(DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
{
base.OnIsBusyChanged(e);
if (AllowedToFocus && !IsBusy)
{
Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(() => { ControlToFocusOn.Focus(); });
AllowedToFocus = false;
}
}
}
To use it, replace the BusyIndicator tags in your xaml with the new EnhancedBusyIndicator and add the appropriate namespace.
Add a new property, ControlToFocusOn inside the element, and bind it to an existing element in the view that you want focus to be on after the EnhancedBusyIndicator disappears:
<my:EnhancedBusyIndicator
ControlToFocusOn="{Binding ElementName=NameTextBox}"
...
>
...
</my:EnhancedBusyIndicator>
In this case, I focused to a textbox called NameTextBox.
That's it. This control will get focus every time we navigate to the page. While we are on the page, if the EnhancedBusyIndicator becomes busy and not busy agiain, focus will not go to the control; this only happens on initial load.
If you want to allow the EnhancedBusyIndicator to focus to the ControlToFocusOn another time, add another property, AllowedToFocus:
<my:EnhancedBusyIndicator
ControlToFocusOn="{Binding ElementName=NameTextBox}"
AllowedToFocus="{Binding IsAllowedToFocus}"
...
>
...
</my:EnhancedBusyIndicator>
When AllowedToFocus is set to true, the next time EnhancedBusyIndicator switches from busy to not busy, focus will go to ControlToFocusOn.
AllowedToFocus can also be set to false when loading the view, to prevent focus from going to a control. If you bind AllowedToFocus to a ViewModel property, you may need to change the BindingMode. By default, it is OneTime.

Categories