In Windows Store Apps, you create a user control to encapsulate and reuse code-behind and layout XAML. A simple user control might look like this:
<UserControl>
<StackPanel>
<TextBlock Text="First Name" />
<TextBox x:Name="MyTextBox" />
</StackPanel>
</UserControl>
Now, I want to setup binding. So I create code-behind with properties that expose the Text properties of the UI controls. Something like this:
public string TextBoxText
{
get { return MyTextBoxText.Text; }
set { MyTextBoxText.Text = value; }
}
However, this does not work. It seems like data binding to a user control is a valuable part of a XAML UI. But how is it accomplished?
There is only one implementation of a property in a user control that supports binding in the consuming page. That is a dependency property. The implementation is simple enough, but you must also include the changed event to interact directly with the UI, since a dependency property is a static property on a control. Like this:
public string TextBoxText
{
get { return (string)GetValue(TextBoxTextProperty); }
set { SetValue(TextBoxTextProperty, value); }
}
public static readonly DependencyProperty TextBoxTextProperty =
DependencyProperty.Register("TextBoxText", typeof(string), typeof(MyUserControl),
new PropertyMetadata(string.Empty, OnTextBoxTextPropertyChanged));
private static void OnTextBoxTextPropertyChanged(DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
{
(d as MyUserControl).MyTextBox.Text = e.NewValue.ToString();
}
I admit, this is not super obvious. But hopefully now that you know, it will save you hours of searching and trying to figure out. Again, you can only bind to a dependency property of a user control. And, you can only set the UI values off the static thread using the changed event.
Best of luck!
You always talk about binding - but you don't actually bind the textbox.textproperty to your property (you set it).
If you wanna use binding, create a dependency property and bind the text-property of the textbox this way:
<TextBox x:Name="MyTextBox" **Text="{Binding TextBoxText, Mode=TwoWay}"** />
Don't forget to set the usercontrols DataContext property to the usercontrol-instance:
public MyUserControl1()
{
this.InitializeComponent();
// Set the datacontext to the usercontrol-instance.
// If you don't, the binding will use the usercontrol's parent-datacontext.
this.DataContext = this;
}