Once I asked how to display multiple views in one window in a windows-forms-application (link).
Now I'd like to know how to do the same in an WPF-application.
You could have in your MainWindow.xaml, just one Stackpanel. Nothing else.
You define all your views in other xaml files. Just that the parent element is not a Window. You need to have it as a Grid/StackPanel.
When you want to load a new view, you just set the appropriate view's root element(or the view itself) as the Children of the StackPanel in MainWindow.xaml
Your best option is to use an MVVM framework such as Caliburn.Micro, which makes view composition very easy. In this case, you would have your shell screen for example, which would be a conductor, and each of your sub screens would just be other view models, which your shell would have references to, and each would become the active item when they needed to be displayed.
I would recommend you to go to MVVM framework . I think you need a MainTabControl which will have child controls. The child controls are not needed to be Windows but UserControls. You can use DataTemplates in wpf to choose the view according to the viewmodel.
Please do let me know if you need more explanation on this.
Related
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 am relatively new to WPF/MVVM. Our current WPF project is still a prototype application, which means we haven't come to designing of main layout. But we do have designed some reports (by reports, I mean some quite complicated UserControl each of which has some configuration controls such as ComobBoxor TextBox, and some DataGrid, Graph controls for the data we want to present) as Viewand their ViewModel. It is still prototype, so we just need to open a new Window which displays any of these UserControl. In the future, we might change it to locate different UserControl in different regions inside the main window, like the layout of Visual Studio. The MAIN point is, our application would include almost a hundred of such UserControl or what we call reports. So it is different from my previous working projects which had static layout/MainView.
I still haven't figured out a good architecture for it. Our classic usage scenario is to let the user to select in the menu report to open, and so we have Command (either in MainViewModel, or in any ViewModel of report) objects to open a new report. So basically the Command is generating a new ViewModel (ViewModel first case) and then a corresponding View should be generated (by whom?), and finally a new Window should be opened including the newly-generated UserControl.
I guess I need two services:
a service which subscribes to the new-ViewModel-generated event, and resolve the UserControl when such event happens.
(for our current prototype application) a window manager, which subscribes to the new-UserControl-generated event published by the 1) service, and then opens a new Window to display it.
And in the future for our actual application, we can change the 2) service and put them into different regions. For the second, it is simple and only temporary, I can just have one object in the code-behind of MainView, which subscribes to the event using EventAggregator, and generate a new Window. Is it correct ?
Can somebody tell me how I should achieve this?
Data binding can already handle this for you. In the container where you want to display the reports add a ContentControl and bind it to a property that holds the VM for the report that you want to display currently.
<Window>
<ContentControl Content="{Binding Path=CurrentReport}" />
</Window>
To display the different reports wrap each of the UserControls in its own DataTemplate that can be injected into the ContentControl. To actually resolve the view you have a few choices. You can create a DataTemplateSelector to map them or just specify the VM types on your templates. In either case, make sure the templates are in scope at the ContentControl (in Resources in the same file or a parent, or merged from standalone ResourceDictionary).
<DataTemplate DataType="{x:Type viewModels:FirstReportViewModel}">
<views:FirstReportViewControl/>
</DataTemplate>
John Bowen beat me to it, by I thought I'd still post, maybe it helps.
For associating views with view models you can use data templates in a resource dictionary.
<DataTemplate DataType="{x:Type vm:AllCustomersViewModel}">
<vw:AllCustomersView />
</DataTemplate>
As you probably already know, you can set namespaces within your resource dictionaries. In this example vw and vm reference the folders containing viewmodels and views respectively.
Now you can use content control to generate the views by binding to the view model.
<ContentControl Content="{Binding SomeViewModel}" />
The code above has been shamelessly stolen from Josh Smith btw.
So, you should not need a service for resolving the association of view to viewmodel. Let the framework do the work for you.
I actually do not recommend opening new windows. If you must, using a "Window Controller"-Service of some sort will be unavoidable. However, I advise you to stick to a single window containing multiple viewmodels and exchanging them upon receiving certain events.
http://s7.directupload.net/images/140511/66z6w2tq.jpg
As you can see on the picture I am explaining everything with a Schema, I have a TabItem and on this TabItem I want to change the DataContext everytime with a Button. What I mean,is that I want to navigate through different UserControls but to stay on the same TabItem from a TabControl. I dont know how to Navigate through different ViewModels and everytime my values not to change from my Elements. I also could not find an Example of the same situation. Any Help with a Code Snippet or a full example will be appriciated.
Thanks in advance.
WPF/MVVM
I think this is a good case for using pub sub with EventAggregator or MvvmLight's Messenger.
You can then loosly coupled notify the MainViewModel to exchange controls or views within a tab.
Basically you can notify another ViewModel with another scope to do certain changes and then subscribe to it.
A possible structure could be:
- A MainViewModel with a collection of TabItemViewModels
- A single TabItemViewModel could contain also Controls and nested ViewModels
If you want to change a tab send a ChangeTabMessage to the MainViewModel
If you want to navigate within a tab use also Messaging or navigate as you do today.
Check out the EventAggregator here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff921122.aspx
or check out MVVMligh Toolkit Messenger ...
HTH
I have a viewModel which is used to bind to a user control. The user control is basically a AdRotator. One of the feature of AdRotator is that it can be used in multiple positions on same screen. Seperate set of ads will be displayed on these multiple adRotators. The single view model exposes 4 observable collections which is deputed for adRotators on various locations . My problem is that since user controls are 'drag n drop' use i am a looking for a identification method that will let me determine which observablecollection(of the 4) should the an adRotator bind to. Please let me know what are the approaches for this.
Will it be a good approach if i retrieve the name of the user control and bind the collection depending on the name?
ViewModels are for logical parts of your application. For reusable controls, I would create a regular UserControl with code behind. This Control can expose API through properties and events, and in your case would expose a Dependency Property that would get the list of "ads".
This way you can position them all in a View, where each AdRotator control is bound to a different collection. This way the logic would sit in only one place - the ViewModel, and the reusable UI would sit in a dedicated control.
View+ViewModels are for logical seperation (Single Responsibility Principle, SRP) where are reusable controls are for reuse (or DRY: don't repeat yourself). It's very important to identify which type of control you are using. regular reusable controls should not contain ViewModel.
I don't know the specifics of your view models so I will offer one possible approach expressed in general terms.
Suppose you have a view model with four child view models which are all variations that have properties that the bindings in your user control are looking for and are named Vm1, Vm2, etc. which in your case could be your ad collections. You could bind the DataContext of each instance of you user control to each of the child view models.
<my:SampleUserControl DataContext="{Binding Path=Vm1}" />
<my:SampleUserControl DataContext="{Binding Path=Vm2}" />
<my:SampleUserControl DataContext="{Binding Path=Vm3}" />
<my:SampleUserControl DataContext="{Binding Path=Vm4}" />
This way each instance of your user control can bind to and display different data.
I m working in a WPF MVVM Project and I am using one Wpf Window. In this window i have a space for one usercontrol and two buttons next and back. When i click the next button I want usercontrol1 to be replaced with usercontrol2. etc.
Sounds like you're trying to create a wizard-style user interface.
This Code Project article may help. And right here is a good place for getting started too.
You can have Wizard user control which is binded to WizardModel, In the Wizard control put ContentPresenter control, and bind it to WizardModel's WizardPage property. And by changing that WizardPage property, you can change wizard page from model.
Hope this helps, here used the same mechanism for changing views