Question

How can i use inheritance with WPF controls

Asked by: static-void

Hi there
Im just trying to create a windows form application using the WPF framework with VS2008. The form is to display a set of pages for configuration and display options however i want all pages to share some characteristics for usability reasons. What i want is to be able to create a base control which contains the common components for the pages and then extend the base control to create each of the individual pages. This seems like a simple thing to do and encourages good OO design however it seems very dificult to do under the framework. I cannot simply create a UserControl and extend it from another UserControl as XAML does not allow this. Any ideas on how to solve this problem.Ive tried using custom controls but they are not designed for this useage and do not have a control structure which existing controls can be added to.

Thanks
Luke

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Asked On
2008-11-22 at 18:13:41ID23928407
Tags

WPF

,

C#

,

Windows Forms

Topics

C / C++ / C# Editors and IDEs

,

.NET Framework 3.x versions

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
4

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Answers

 

by: PlatoConsultantPosted on 2008-11-22 at 19:03:53ID: 23023465

use ur own classes to do this not the XAML as it dont provide such functionality .
it is just a designer template like in OLD winform applications.

Well, for one, you don't have to use XAML. You can just as well write your
own class derived from Window or any other type of control, and write the
code that populates the window/control. In many ways, its not very different
than the form designer
in previous versions of .NET. The designer is just a
visual representation of the code that is being generated to populate the
form. XAML, on the other hand, is just a declarative/XML representation the
objects in the window/control. You can still derive new classes or add
anything you want to the class, and you can access anything declared in the
XAML by its name as a member of the class. Hope this helps.

 

by: PlatoConsultantPosted on 2008-11-22 at 19:14:35ID: 23023505

WPF Tree View by Using the View Model Pattern , please read this code and u will find most of the question relating to ur problem answered.

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/TreeViewWithViewModel.aspx

this article explores how to use the ViewModel pattern to make it easier to work with the TreeView control in WPF. Along the way, we examine why people often have difficulty with the WPF TreeView, what a ViewModel is, and two demo applications that show how to combine a TreeView with a ViewModel. One of the demos shows how to create a searchable TreeView, the other demonstrates how to implement lazy-loading (a.k.a. load-on-demand).

 

by: static-voidPosted on 2008-11-22 at 20:07:01ID: 23023655

I understand that XAML isnt the place to produce a base class. And i think the point your making is that XAML is simply creating a layout through which data is presented.

In clarification what i want is to create a base pattern for my controls so that the all have the same basic features. In inheritance based languages the way you would normally do this is to create a superclass which implements the comon features and implement the specific details in the extentions of the superclass. I want to apply this to my UI design so that my individual (which i could do with regular windows forms).

In terms of defining the superclass in a code file i have tried this also but cannot display anything. In old windows forms to controls had location and size properties however the new controols dont contain these properties when i am simply in a code file. I think this is because there is no supporting XAML file. I hope that makes sense. So for example the code below is about as much as i can do in code.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Controls;
 
namespace MyNamespace
{
    class Class1 : UserControl
    {
        private Button m_Button;
        public Class1()
        {
            InitializeComponents();
        }
        private void InitializeComponents()
        {
            m_Button = new Button();
            //m_Button.Location doesnt exist
            //m_Button.Size doesnt exist
            //this.Controls doesnt exist
        }
    }
}

                                              
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by: KeithburnhamPosted on 2008-12-12 at 07:11:42ID: 23157774

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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