Exiting an App or Closing a Control When Using MVV

In my WPF application, I am using the ViewModelLocator without IoC. I am calling the static ViewModelLocator.Cleanup() method provided by the MVVM-Light framework from my own button which is tied to a "close window command". This Command calls the static ViewModelLocator.Cleanup(), which calls an instance Cleanup() method on my MainWindowViewModel instance. The instance Cleanup() method then sets the property to which the MainWindow binds its DataContext, to null. The setter on the property raises a PropertyChanged event. Curiously, setting this property to null does not cause the window to close.

I am trying to understand why this is the case? If I set the MainWindow's DataContext to null, should that not be the same as Window.Close()? In my case, the Window and all of its elements remain on the screen. However, if I attempt further actions, I get null pointer exceptions, indicating the DataContext binding Property has indeed been set to null; this has also been confirmed in the debugger.

I have created a workaround by hooking the Application.Exit event and issuing a Window.Close() in the event handler in order to create my own "Close Window" button (ie, to create same functionality for my own Button / Command as clicking the X button in the upper right of a Window). Since calling a UI element (ie, the Window instance) from MVVM directly is not MVVM friendly, I used a ViewService to implement the Window.Close() functionality in order to keep the workaround MVVM friendly. I am a big fan of the ViewService idiom (or pattern), but I just don't think it should be necessary here; except, I could see how exiting the app is a special case that perhaps should tie-in with the application lifecycle, and .Net seems to only allow exiting a WPF app by issuing the Window.Close() method.

Thoughts appreciated.

I believe I have found the answer to my original question, in addition to the one raised in my comments discussion with flq.

First, the answer to the original question is that the proper way to close the Window is along the lines of what I did in my described "workaround". Closing an app is a View-initiated process, as it is the Window control that has the bits for how to do it. You can of course hook the Application.Exit event so that you can perform cleanup on your ViewModels, prompt the user to save data, etc..

The question raised by me after some interesting discussion with flq is, if I don't just set a control's DataContext (ie, ViewModel) to null in order to release the View and ViewModel resources, how should I do it?

An interesting discussion with some nuances can be found here, but the basic answer is that you find the parent control and remove the control you want to close from its Children list. Note, this is a different technique with a different goal than just making the control not visible by setting is Visibility property to Collapsed. In the following example, "this" is the control to be removed (ie, "Closed"):

Panel p = (Panel) this.Parent;
p.Children.Remove(this);

I am not sure if you still need to then set the child (ie, "this") to null to re-claim its resources, or, if just removing it from the visual tree will cause WPF to re-claim the resources; the above linked discussion makes no mention. As mentioned in the original discussion, the above technique can be supplemented by hooking it to certain events, or using other application specific logic.