By default a ListView looks and acts much like a standard WPF ListBox (when in it’s default state) but ofcourse we can also include headers/columns and groupings whichon top of the basic list of data.

Let’s assume we’re wanting to display a collection of Person objects where the Person type is made up of FirstName, LastName and Age. For this example assume these are exposed by the People property on our view model.

To display our collection we can simply do the following

<ListView ItemsSource="{Binding People}" />

But this will display the type name for each item in our collection and ofcourse doesn’t have headings. So to add headings we need to use the following

<ListView ItemsSource="{Binding People}">
   <ListView.View>
      <GridView>
         <GridViewColumn Header="First Name" Width="150" 
                   DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding FirstName}"/>
         <GridViewColumn Header="Last Name" Width="150" 
                   DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding LastName}"/>
         <GridViewColumn Header="Age" Width="100" 
                   DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding Age}"/>
      </GridView>
   </ListView.View>
</ListView>

this will also display the members we’re binding to so no longer display the type name.

So far so good, but to add groupings we need to do a little more work. In XAML we have the following (in the Window ResourceDictionary)

<CollectionViewSource Source="{Binding People}" x:Key="GroupedItems">
   <CollectionViewSource.GroupDescriptions>
      <PropertyGroupDescription PropertyName="LastName" />
   </CollectionViewSource.GroupDescriptions>
</CollectionViewSource>

If using the above XAML we also need to alter the ListView’s ItemSource to this

<ListView ItemsSource="{Binding Source={StaticResource GroupedItems}}">

this will then bind to the GroupedItems. Note we must use the “Source=” XAML.

We can also easily declare the same groupings in C# code as per below

CollectionView collectionView = 
      (CollectionView)CollectionViewSource.GetDefaultView(list.ItemsSource);
PropertyGroupDescription pgd = new PropertyGroupDescription("LastName");
collectionView.GroupDescriptions.Add(pgd);

Note: in the above case our ListView has the x:Name=”list” and ofcourse doesn’t require the ItemsSource binding change listed for the XAML code.

Using the CollectionView we add property group descriptions but we need to amend our ListView XAML to use this. By adding the ListView.GroupStyle as per below, we create the control template for the groupings

<ListView.GroupStyle>
   <GroupStyle>
      <GroupStyle.ContainerStyle>
         <Style TargetType="GroupItem">
            <Setter Property="Template">
               <Setter.Value>
                  <ControlTemplate TargetType="{x:Type GroupItem}">
                     <StackPanel>
                        <TextBlock FontWeight="Bold" 
                                FontSize="14" Text="{Binding Path=Name}"/>
                        <ItemsPresenter/>
                     </StackPanel>
                  </ControlTemplate>
               </Setter.Value>
            </Setter>
         </Style>
      </GroupStyle.ContainerStyle>
   </GroupStyle>
</ListView.GroupStyle>

The key things to note in the above XAML are that we need to ensure we put the ItemsPresenter into the ControlTemplate or now items are displayed and we do not bind to the data but instead bind to the CollectionViewGroup which is what the CollectionViewSource groups the data into. So in this case Name represents the string data for the grouping name and we could also bind to ItemCount for example if we wanted to show to the user the number of items in the grouping.

One of the key design principles for designing controls in WPF is the separation of UI from the actual control implementation (or functionality if you prefer). The aim is to create a control with properties, methods, events, states etc. as needed that does not rely on the specifics of the way the UI displays the control.

I’m going to work through a very simple lookless control to just get an idea how such a control might be implemented.

What’s the control going to be ?

Okay I don’t want anything too large as this is mean’t as a quick and easy to follow post. So the control will be a countdown timer control. A control which takes a time, in seconds and each second decreases the count until it reaches zero at which point it stops.

The control will have the following properties

From – this will hold to countdown “from” value (in seconds). In other words the value we start the countdown at.
Current – this will hold the current value in the countdown, obviously this will reduce from the “From” value down to zero.
IsRunning – this will allow us to know if the countdown timer is running.

Steps

1. Create a CountdownControl class and implement the properties described above
2. Create a CountdownControl XAML file and create a default style
3. Create an alternate UI by overriding the ControlTemplate

Let’s implement this thing

Step 1

So step 1 is to create a new class called CountdownControl, we will derive this from a Control as we’re not looking to extend any existing control for this. So it should look like

public class CountdownControl : Control
{
}

Nothing exciting there.

As we’re going to countdown from a given value and for this example we’ve assumed the use of seconds only. We’ll use the DispatcherTimer to give us an event every second which will allow us to decrement the current value accordingly. As this isn’t mean’t to be a step by step for coding this I’ll simply point out that we can use the snippets in Visual Studio 2012 (dp and dpp) to create the propeties as follows.

1. Create the IsRunning as a dependency property with property changed event
2. Create the CurrentProperty as a readonly dependency property
3. Create the From as a dependency property with property changed event
4. Create a CountdownControl constructor and add the code to created the timer
5. create the timer tick event and have it decrement the Current property until it reaches 0 then set the IsRunning to false
6. On the OnIsRunningRunningChanged either start or stop the timer depending on the value passed to it
7. On the OnFromChanged, set the IsRunning to true if a value greater than 0 is assigned to the From property

And here’s the code

public class CountdownControl : Control
{
   private readonly DispatcherTimer timer;

   public CountdownControl()
   {
      timer = new DispatcherTimer();
      timer.Interval = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1);
      timer.Tick += TimerTick;
   }

   private void TimerTick(object sender, EventArgs e)
   {
      if (Current > 0)
      {
         SetValue(CurrentPropertyKey, Current - 1);
         if (Current == 0)
         {
            IsRunning = false;
         }
      }
   }

   public static readonly DependencyProperty IsRunningProperty =
		DependencyProperty.Register("IsRunning", typeof(bool), 
                typeof(CountdownControl),
		new FrameworkPropertyMetadata((bool)false,
		new PropertyChangedCallback(OnIsRunningChanged)));

   public bool IsRunning
   {
      get { return (bool)GetValue(IsRunningProperty); }
      set { SetValue(IsRunningProperty, value); }
   }

   private static void OnIsRunningChanged(DependencyObject d, 
               DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
   {
      CountdownControl target = (CountdownControl)d;
      bool oldIsRunning = (bool)e.OldValue;
      bool newIsRunning = target.IsRunning;
      target.OnIsRunningChanged(oldIsRunning, newIsRunning);
   }

   protected virtual void OnIsRunningChanged(bool oldIsRunning, bool newIsRunning)
   {
      if (!DesignerProperties.GetIsInDesignMode(this))
      {
         if (newIsRunning)
            timer.Start();
         else
            timer.Stop();
      }
   }

   private static readonly DependencyPropertyKey CurrentPropertyKey
		= DependencyProperty.RegisterReadOnly("Current", typeof(int), 
                        typeof(CountdownControl),
			new FrameworkPropertyMetadata((int)0));

   public static readonly DependencyProperty CurrentProperty
		= CurrentPropertyKey.DependencyProperty;

   public int Current
   {
      get { return (int)GetValue(CurrentProperty); }
   }

   public static readonly DependencyProperty FromProperty =
		DependencyProperty.Register("From", typeof(int), typeof(CountdownControl),
		new FrameworkPropertyMetadata((int)0,
		new PropertyChangedCallback(OnFromChanged)));

   public int From
   {
      get { return (int)GetValue(FromProperty); }
      set { SetValue(FromProperty, value); }
   }

   private static void OnFromChanged(DependencyObject d, 
                 DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
   {
      CountdownControl target = (CountdownControl)d;
      int oldFrom = (int)e.OldValue;
      int newFrom = target.From;
      target.OnFromChanged(oldFrom, newFrom);
   }

   protected virtual void OnFromChanged(int oldFrom, int newFrom)
   {
      SetValue(CurrentPropertyKey, newFrom); 
      IsRunning = (newFrom > 0);
   }
}

As can be seen, there’s no UI code here, only properties and functionality yet this will implement a countdown clock.

Note: The user of the DesignerProperties.GetIsInDesignMode is to stop the control counting down when in the XAML designer

Before we move onto the next step, which is to add a default style/look, let’s finish up here by creating the following static constructor

static CountdownControl()
{
   DefaultStyleKeyProperty.OverrideMetadata(typeof(CountdownControl), 
		new FrameworkPropertyMetadata(typeof(CountdownControl)));
}

As per a previous post on extending an existing control, the DefaultStyleKeyProperty is here to change the metadata for this class to associate a new style with this specific type.

Step 2

Create a ResourceDictionary named CountdownControl.xaml and add the following code

<Style TargetType="{x:Type Controls:CountdownControl}">
   <Setter Property="Template">
      <Setter.Value>
         <ControlTemplate TargetType="{x:Type Controls:CountdownControl}">
            <Grid>
               <TextBlock Text="{Binding Current, RelativeSource={RelativeSource TemplatedParent}}" />
            </Grid>
         </ControlTemplate>
      </Setter.Value>
   </Setter>
</Style>

There’s not masses to say here except that this will now display the Current property value as it counts down in a TextBlock. The use of the binding instead of TemplateBinding is covered in a previous post, but basically TemplateBinding is lightweight and does not support the type conversion from an int (the current property) to a string. So we have to use the more verbose Binding syntax to solve this.

Lastly, if you are creating this control in it’s own assembly and haven’t already got one, create a Themes folder in your project and add a Generic.xaml ResourceDictionary inside the folder. Then add the following XAML

<ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
   <ResourceDictionary Source="/SimpleControl;component/CountdownControl.xaml" />
</ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>

Step 3

Now we can use the CountdownControl by simply adding the following

<Controls:CountdownControl From="30"/>

Note: This assumes you’ve a namespace for the CountdownControls aliased as Controls.

If you run the application now it should display a simple text countdown from 30 to zero.

So whilst our lookless code then got a default look, we now want to re-template it to something a little nicer (although still fairly simple).

We’re going to now re-template the control to use a progress bar to show the countdown. So let’s see the new Style for this.

<Style TargetType="{x:Type c:CountdownControl}">
   <Setter Property="Template">
      <Setter.Value>
          <ControlTemplate TargetType="{x:Type c:CountdownControl}">
             <Grid>
                <ProgressBar Minimum="0" Maximum="{Binding From, RelativeSource={RelativeSource TemplatedParent}}" 
                      Value="{Binding Current, RelativeSource={RelativeSource TemplatedParent}, Mode=OneWay}" Height="20"/>
             </Grid>
          </ControlTemplate>
       </Setter.Value>
    </Setter>
</Style>

As you can see we’re now also using the From property as well as the Current property. We might have also decided to use the IsRunning with a BooleanToVisibilityConverter to hide the progress bar when it reaches zero.

In Summary

We’ve created a control which began by having no UI and was lookless and also very much testable. We then created a basic default look so we could at least see something when designing with the control. Finally we created a nicer UI for our specific needs.

TemplateBinding can be used within a ControlTemplate to reference a value from the control that the template has been implemented on, but it has a few issues associated with it.

On the plus side

TemplateBinding is evaluated at compile time giving an increase in performance.

On the negative side

TemplateBinding is a little lightweight on features and in what it can bind to or more specifically how it’s binds. It doesn’t offer all the capabilities of the Binding, for example you cannot apply converters, it doesn’t support two-way binding and most importantly it doesn’t handle the type converting that Binding implements.

So for example

<TextBlock Text="{TemplateBinding MyInteger}" />

where (you guessed it) MyInteger is an int, nothing will be output in this TextBlock. As it cannot convert an int to a string.

Luckily there’s another way of binding to the template using the slightly more verbose TemplatedParent option

<TextBlock Text="{Binding MyInteger, RelativeSource={RelativeSource TemplatedParent}}" />

Unlike the TemplateBinding this is evaluated at runtime and by using the Binding class we can all the goodness associated with Binding.

When creating a control in WPF the aim is to try to separate the UI from the functionality that implements the control logic. That is to say, create a “lookless” control. A lookless control may potentially have one or more of the following: functionality, properties, events, styles and visual state. The control itself should not know about how it’s displayed but may well know what part’s it might wish to manipulate (and what base types they are).

We want to publish the parts of the control that may be manipulated by a ControlTemplate so that a designer application, such as Visual Studio’s built-in WPF UI designer or Expression Blend, can find out which parts the control manipulates or what styles are used or what states exist within the control.

The following attributes are applied to a control’s class definition to publish various pieces of metadata.

TemplatePart Attribute

A control may be thought of as broken up into sections, for example maybe we’ve created a colour picker type of control which has a section made up of a selection of rectangles each showing a colour and possibly another section which is some for of input (let’s assume a TextBox) which is used to take the hexadecimal representation of a colour.

Within our code we’d declare these parts as follows:

[TemplatePart(Name = PART_HexadecimalInput, Type = typeof(TextBox))]
[TemplatePart(Name = PART_ColourSelectionPanel, Type = typeof(Panel))]
public class ColourPicker : Control
{
   private const string PART_HexadecimalInput = "PART_HexadecimalInput";
   private const string PART_ColourSelectionPanel = "PART_ColourSelectionPanel";

   // implementation
}

Note: The general rule is to name such parts by prefixing with PART_

Now within our implementation of the control we will have some code to get the various parts from the ControlTemplate applied to this control. This is usually handled in the OnApplyTemplate method as per the following

public override void OnApplyTemplate()
{
   base.OnApplyTemplate();

   hexadecimalInput = GetTemplateChild(PART_HexadecimalInput) as TextBox;
   colourSelectionPanel = GetTemplateChild(PART_ColourSelectionPanel) as Panel;
}

Assuming hexadecimalInput is of type TextBox and colourSelectionPanel is a Panel, we now have access to the parts that potentially make up the ControlTemplate. I say potentially because it’s equally possible that somebody re-templates to include only limited functionality, so for example maybe we just want the colour picker then we remove the PART_HexadecimalInput from our ControlTemplate. Thus this code should handle situations where a part is not found in the template.

Once the control has access to the parts (and assuming they exist in the ControlTemplate) we can now attached event handlers to them or manipulate them in different ways.

StyleTypedProperty Attribute

The StyleTypedProperty exposes the properties which are of type Style, for example we wish to extend our ColourPicker to have a property that has the Style applied to the colour selection panel. We declare the property as per any other dependency property (I’ll list below just for completeness)

public static readonly DependencyProperty ColourSelectionPanelStyleProperty =     
                 DependencyProperty.Register(
                 "ColourSelectionPanelStyle",
                 typeof(Style),
                 typeof(ColourPicker),
                 new PropertyMetadata(null));

public Style ColourSelectionPanelStyle
{
   get { return (Style)GetValue(ColourSelectionPanelStyleProperty ); }
   set { SetValue(ColourSelectionPanelStyleProperty , value); }
}

So now we have a property of type Style named ColourSelectionPanelStyle. We want to now expose this via the StyleTypedPropertyAttribute as per

[StyleTypedProperty(Property = "ColourSelectionPanelStyle", StyleTargetType = typeof(Panel))]
public class ColourPicker : Control
{
   // implementation
}

Exposing our style like this means we could easily apply, just the style, to part of our control without the need to clone the whole ControlTemplate.

TemplateVisualState Attribute

In a previous post I talked about using the VisualStateManager (VSM) and how we can create our own strings to represent a control’s different state. These strings are keys defined by the developer to represent various changes within a control.

To publish these states we use the TemplateVisualStateAttribute, for example

[TemplateVisualState(Name = "ColourSelected", GroupName = "SelectionStates")]
public class ColourPicker : Control
{
   // implementation
}

Now within our ControlTemplate we might have a VSM with the VisualState

<VisualStateManager.VisualStateGroups>
   <VisualStateGroup x:Name="ColourPickerGroup">
      <VisualState x:Name="ColourPickedState">
         <!-- Some UI specific code -->
      </VisualState>
   </VisualStateGroup>
</VisualStateManager.VisualStateGroups>

ContentProperty Attribute

The ContentPropertyAttribute can be used to indicate which property is the XAML content property. We might be hard pushed to find a use for the ContentProperty on our example ColourPicker, so instead let’s look at a ResourceKeyConverter class

[ContentProperty("Options")]
public class ResourceKeyConverter : MarkupExtension, IValueConverter
{
   public ResourceDictionary Options { get; set; }
   // implementation
}

Now XAML knows that within the ResourceKeyConverter XAML code the content is of type ResourceDictionary, for example

<UI:ResourceKeyConverter x:Key="resourceConverter">
   <ResourceDictionary>
      <SolidColorBrush Color="Red" x:Key="X" />
      <SolidColorBrush Color="Green" x:Key="Y" />
   </ResourceDictionary>
</UI:ResourceKeyConverter>

If the type of the property is not a string or object the XAML procesoor tries to convert the type using native type conversions or look for a type converter.