Binding Silverlight UserControl custom properties to its' elements
- by ghostskunks
Hi. I'm trying to make a simple crossword puzzle game in Silverlight 2.0. I'm working on a UserControl-ish component that represents a square in the puzzle. I'm having trouble with binding up my UserControl's properties with its' elements. I've finally (sort of) got it working (may be helpful to some - it took me a few long hours), but wanted to make it more 'elegant'.
I've imagined it should have a compartment for the content and a label (in the upper right corner) that optionally contains its' number. The content control probably be a TextBox, while label control could be a TextBlock. So I created a UserControl with this basic structure (the values are hardcoded at this stage):
<UserControl x:Class="XWord.Square"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
FontSize="30"
Width="100" Height="100">
<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
<Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<ColumnDefinition Width="*"/>
<ColumnDefinition Width="Auto"/>
</Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<Grid.RowDefinitions>
<RowDefinition Height="Auto"/>
<RowDefinition Height="*"/>
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<TextBlock x:Name="Label" Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="1"
Text="7"/>
<TextBox x:Name="Content" Grid.Row="1" Grid.Column="0"
Text="A"
BorderThickness="0" />
</Grid>
</UserControl>
I've also created DependencyProperties in the Square class like this:
public static readonly DependencyProperty LabelTextProperty;
public static readonly DependencyProperty ContentCharacterProperty;
// ...(static constructor with property registration, .NET properties
// omitted for brevity)...
Now I'd like to figure out how to bind the Label and Content element to the two properties. I do it like this (in the code-behind file):
Label.SetBinding( TextBlock.TextProperty, new Binding { Source = this, Path = new PropertyPath( "LabelText" ), Mode = BindingMode.OneWay } );
Content.SetBinding( TextBox.TextProperty, new Binding { Source = this, Path = new PropertyPath( "ContentCharacter" ), Mode = BindingMode.TwoWay } );
That would be more elegant done in XAML. Does anyone know how that's done?
