D2 SIG Meeting – 07/07/2009 – Recap

I attended the July D2 SIG Meeting this passed Tuesday.  Claudio Lassala was speaking on the topic of Data Binding in WPF.  Pretty good turnout of 30-35 people, especially since this is a fairly new group.

Claudio’s Information

• Blog: http://ClaudioLassala.spaces.live.com
• Email: Claudio@eps-software.com
• Twitter: http://Twitter.com/claudiolassala

High-level Presentation Summary

WPF – Windows Presentation Foundation – WikiPedia defines a WPF as graphical subsystem for rendering user interfaces in Windows-based applications.

XAML – Extensible Application Markup Language – The declarative language behind WPF

The simple concept of data binding is relating two objects and saying when one changes, so does the other.

Objects involved in Data Binding

• Target – TextBox, ComboBox,etc
• Source – Customer object

Binding Modes in WPF

• OneWay – reads the information from the source and populates the target TextBox.
• TwoWay – reads the information from the source and populates the target TextBox, but if the TextBox is changed, it updates the source Customer Object. This needs notification through a DependencyObject or INotifyPropertyChanged.
• OneWayToSource – sends data from the target to the source.

Types of Binding

• XAML Binding
• Programmatic Binding

Bindings can be removed using BindingOperations.ClearBinding() method

Relative Sources

• Self, TemplatedParent, FindAncestor, PreviousData
• Value Converters can convert values during the process of binding.
• Data Validation
• Data Templates

Some of the examples Claudio went over included

• Binding an image control to a byte array
• ListBox
• Validation Rules
• Simple Binding from Blend
• TwoWay Notification
• Rating to Color Converter
• XML Data Provider

Presentation Slides and Demo Code

Claudio does a great job of showing you how you should not code something then following by how you should.

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Until next time…