WPF used within a WinForms application, where to put Application resources? - c#

At present we host a number of WPF controls in a WinForms application. The application is started using the System.Windows.Forms.Application.Run(...) method and WPF controls hosted using the ElementHost.
In a normal WPF application I'd define a System.Windows.Application object (App.xaml) and call run on it. Normally any application level WPF resources would go in there. We don't have this.
How can I specify application level resources for the WPF controls but still run as a WinForms app?

In a hosted environment you do not have easy access to the Application, Dr WPF has a couple of methods for working in a hosted scenario at http://drwpf.com/blog/2007/10/05/managing-application-resources-when-wpf-is-hosted/.
I am personally using his SharedResources class in a work project, VB6 Form hosting Winforms UserControl hosting ElementHost hosting WPF UserControl with a Application wide theme, for the WPF controls.

If you host WPF controls within a WinForms application you do not have the Applicationobject which hosts the application-wide resources. The trick is to create such a object, load your global resources and merge them into the ResourceDictionary.
Here is an example of this code:
http://www.snippetsource.net/Snippet/26/load-application-level-resources-in-winforms-hosted-wpf-controls (Link fixed)

Related

Is it feasible to dock a exe inside c# winform? What kind of challenges will be there?

I have an application which is developed in c# WinForms. Now i am developing an another application using ReactJS and Electron. I am able to do that and i have generated EXE successfully.
Now i dont want to run both the applications as separate applications. So i docked ReactJS and Electron generated EXE inside a form container of existing WinForm application. I used this article to achieve that- Docking Window inside another Window
Now EXE is running inside WinForm but i am facing some issues in UI rednering. See that attached screenshot. Application is not properly.
Is it right way to do it? Does anybody has experience in this? What kind of other problems i am going to face in future?

Embed threaded WindowsFormsHost in WPF

I have a WPF application and an ActiveX control that gets embedded into the WPF application using a WindowsFormsHost control.
The ActiveX control is used to communicate with an external application that draws 3D contents into the control.
One big issue of this setup is that if the ActiveX control does some long running operations, the rest of the WPF application gets blocked.
I would like to solve this issue and somehow prevent the ActiveX control to be hosted on the same thread as the remaining controls in my UI.
I searched for possible solutions and found this article:
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dwayneneed/2007/04/26/multithreaded-ui-hostvisual/
Unfortunately I cannot use this sample to host a WindowsFormsHost element as it is not derived from Visual.
The only other option I could implement so far is to host the ActiveX control inside a separate window which I launch on a separate thread.
Although this works it is quite messy to manage as I have to manually snap the separate window to the main window to get kind of a uniform layout.
Is there anything else I can try to achieve a single-window experience but also having the ActiveX control hosted on a separate thread?

Is It posible to Port Windows Forms apps to WPF Converting it's Designer.cs files to XAML files?

Good day, I want to port my Windows Forms App to WPF, I have been investigating and I know that it's almost impossible to port it because of the designer.cs files of Winforms and WPF uses .XAML, but, this web pageconverts your designer files to XAML, so, it is still possible?
You can't port YourForm.Designer.cs because the System.Windows.Forms and System.Windows.Controls are different classes. But there's still a way. Add the namespace of Windows Forms to XAML code. Then, use a WindowsFormsHost. You may add them only with WindowsFormsHost. Then, just copy your methods to C# code of WPF application.
Note: Do not forget to name your controls in WindowsFormsHost correctly.
Note 2: You must check your code after that operations. Because something may need to change.

WPF User Control in WinFORMS: Project Structuring

SCENARIO
I decided to work on WPF technology for my new application. This application has to be called on Menu click from a WinForms window. So I created a WPF UserControl Library and integrate it to display in parent WinForms Form using Element Host.
My Application
It contains 3 child usercontrols which are encapsulated inside another usercontrol with tabContent Control. I prefered this approach as firing events from Child UserControl and handling in WinForms (subscribing events) seemed painful.
My Question
Now facing the same painful task of accessing UserControl elements inside Winforms where I have created Data Manager class for proper project structuring reasons (UserControl should not contain Data Manager class-UI). Please guide me as to how to structure my project/how to subscribe events/access WPFUserControl elements inside WPF.
Take a look at the Messenger class of MVVM Light Toolkit (can also be used standalone). It helps decoupling your controls. The messenger works with a publish/subscribe pattern. Your WPF UserControls can publish objects, the WinForms Host can listen on those notifications. The exchanged messages (objects) are best placed in separate assembly, as they define the shared contract between WPF UC-library and WinForms application.

Opening & executing .xaml in windows form

I was wondering how can I run .xaml forms (wpfapplication) in windows form? Plus another question is, I have 2 projects ; windows form application & wpf application, i would like to combine this two and make it dependable to each others such that if I click a button on the Wpfapplication, i would call or execute a method in the windows application. is this even possible? Any help/guide would really be appreciated!
Yes, you can host WPF controls inside Winforms. You want to have a look at the ElementHost class.
For your other problem: If you are talking about combining the sources of both applications and basically make one executable for them then it essentially comes down to calling library functions - so thats possible. If you are talking about two independent applications in two separate processes then then it gets more complicated: you would need to add an interface to your applications exposing the methods to be called. There are many ways to do that: WCF, .Net remoting, Sockets.
Host WPF Controls in Windows Forms
Host Windows Forms Controls in WPF

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