Using XAML + designer to edit Plain Old CLR Objects?
- by Joe White
I want to write a POCO in XAML, and use a DataTemplate to display that object in the GUI at runtime. So far, so good; I know how to do all that.
Since I'll already have a DataTemplate that can transform my POCO into a WPF visual tree, is there any way to get the Visual Studio designer to play along, and have the Design View show me the POCO+DataTemplate's resulting GUI, as I edit the POCO's XAML? (Obviously the designer wouldn't know how to edit the "design view"; I wouldn't expect the Toolbox or click-and-drag to work on the design surface. That's fine -- I just want to see a preview as I edit.)
If you're curious, the POCOs in question would be level maps for a game. (At this point, I'm not planning to ship an end-user map editor, so I'll be doing all the editing myself in Visual Studio.) So the XAML isn't WPF GUI objects like Window and UserControl, but it's still not something where I would want to blindly bang out some XAML and hope for the best. I want to see what I'm doing (the GUI map) as I'm doing it.
If I try to make a XAML file whose root is my map object, the designer shows "Intentionally Left Blank - The document root element is not supported by the visual designer." It does this even if I've defined a DataTemplate in App.xaml's <Application.Resources>.
But I know the designer can show my POCO, when it's inside a WPF object. One possible way of accomplishing what I want would be to have a ScratchUserControl that just contains a ContentPresenter, and write my POCO XAML inside that ContentPresenter's Content property, e.g.:
<UserControl ...>
<ContentPresenter>
<ContentPresenter.Content>
<Maps:Map .../>
</ContentPresenter.Content>
</ContentPresenter>
</UserControl>
But then I would have to be sure to copy the content back out into its own file when I was done editing, which seems tedious and error-prone, and I don't like tedious and error-prone. And since I can preview my XAML this way, isn't there some way to do it without the UserControl?
