Custom Entry Points in WPF on .NET Core
Posted: January 31, 2020 Filed under: .NET, .NET Core, WPF | Tags: .NET, .NET Core, WPF 2 CommentsTo create a custom entry point for a WPF application that is created using the default template in Visual Studio and targets the .NET Framework, you can change the Build Action property of the App.xaml file from ApplicationDefinition to Page and create a class with a static Main method. That’s what I did in a previous post about handling protocol activation and redirection in packaged apps.
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Handle Protocol Activation and Redirection in Packaged Apps
Posted: May 10, 2019 Filed under: .NET, MSIX, WPF | Tags: .NET, C#, Desktop Bridge, MSIX, UWP, WPF 3 CommentsAn example of how to handle Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) protocol and file extension activation in a packaged WPF application.
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WPF on .NET Core
Posted: December 15, 2018 Filed under: .NET, .NET Core, Windows Forms, WPF | Tags: .NET, .NET Core, Windows Forms, WPF 1 CommentMicrosoft announced at Build 2018 back in May that they are bringing .NET Core to the Windows desktop applications frameworks, including both WPF and Windows Forms. This means that your client applications will be able to take advantage of the various performance improvements that have been introduced in .NET Core and that you will be able to deploy them as self-contained executables (.exes) that have no dependency upon any pre-installed version of .NET. Read »
Enabling ClearType on a TextBox in a transparent WPF window
Posted: July 7, 2016 Filed under: WPF | Tags: .NET, WPF, XAML Leave a commentIf you try to improve the readability and smoothness of the text in your WPF application by simply setting the RenderOptions.ClearTypeHint attached property to System.Windows.Media.ClearTypeHint.Enabled on a TextBox in a transparent window, the text in the TextBox will still not be rendered using ClearType.
This post explains how to enable ClearType – a subpixel anti-aliasing technique for improving text smoothness – also for TextBoxes.
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Implementing global hot keys in WPF
Posted: March 31, 2015 Filed under: .NET, C#, WPF | Tags: .NET, C#, WPF 7 CommentsIf you want your WPF application to be able to detect and handle key presses even when it is not currently activated or focused on the screen you could implement what is known as global hot keys in Windows.
A global, or system-wide, hot key is a key or a combination of keys that is associated with a particular window, which will receive messages whenever the user presses this key or key combination from anywhere in the system.
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Enumerating collections that change in C#
Posted: February 28, 2015 Filed under: .NET, C# | Tags: .NET, C# 3 CommentsIf you try you remove an item from an IEnumerable while enumerating it using a foreach loop in C# you will get an InvalidOperationException saying that “Collection was modified; enumeration operation may not execute”.
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Generic type parameters and dynamic types in C#
Posted: October 31, 2014 Filed under: .NET, C# | Tags: .NET, C# Leave a commentThere may be times when you need to use some type in your application that is not known until runtime. This post will explain what you need to do in order to be able to use such a dynamically loaded type from a dynamically loaded assembly as a generic type parameter when you create an instance of some generic class in your application.
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Merging cells in a WPF ListView
Posted: May 31, 2014 Filed under: WPF | Tags: .NET, C#, MVVM, WPF, XAML 7 CommentsThis post provides an example of how you can merge cells that contain the same value in a ListView in WPF and make it look like the cell spans several rows as shown in the rightmost picture below.
How to export data from a DataGrid in WPF
Posted: September 29, 2013 Filed under: WPF | Tags: .NET, C#, WPF, XAML 1 CommentThe DataGrid control in WPF provides a flexible way to display, sort, group and filter tabular data. A common requirement is the ability to export this data to some physical file that can be imported into Microsoft Excel or some similar software for further processing.
This post provides an example of how you could create a .csv file out of a data-bound collection of objects of any type by using reflection and extending the functionality of the System.Windows.Controls.DataGrid control by implementing an extension method.
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Cascading ComboBoxes in WPF using MVVM
Posted: June 17, 2013 Filed under: MVVM, WPF | Tags: .NET, C#, MVVM, WPF, XAML 6 CommentsWhen a user is selecting an item from a cascading ComboBox, another ComboBox gets automatically populated with items based on the selection in the first one. This post is about how you can implement this behaviour in a WPF application using the MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) pattern.
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Implementing a generic data access layer using Entity Framework
Posted: May 30, 2013 Filed under: Entity Framework, N-tier | Tags: .NET, C#, Entity Framework, N-tier 159 CommentsThis post is about how you can develop a generic data access layer (DAL) with full CRUD (Create, Read, Update and Delete) support using Entity Framework 5 with plain old CLR objects (POCOs) and short-lived contexts in a disconnected and stateless N-tier application.
Entity Framework (EF) is Microsoft’s recommended data access technology when building new .NET applications. It is an object-relational mapping framework (ORM) that enables developers to work with relational data using domain-specific objects without having to write code to access data from a database.
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Implement a MVVM loading dialog in WPF
Posted: April 30, 2013 Filed under: MVVM, Prism, WPF | Tags: .NET, C#, CancellationToken, MVVM, Prism, TPL, WPF, XAML Leave a commentContinuing from my last post about how to display dialogs to the user in a MVVM WPF application using Prism without breaking the pattern, this one is about how you can extend the built-in functionality to implement a loading dialog to be shown to the user while running a background operation.
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Implement a confirmation dialog in WPF using MVVM and Prism
Posted: April 20, 2013 Filed under: MVVM, Prism, WPF | Tags: .NET, C#, MVVM, Prism, WPF 12 CommentsIf you are serious about implementing the MVVM pattern in your UI applications you should be well aware of the fact that any call you make to System.Windows.MessageBox.Show from your view models violates this pattern and the separation of concerns that exists between the application’s logic and its presentation.
By honoring the MVVM design pattern and its principles your application is likely to require less effort when you make changes in one area or another as the presentation layer (the view), the presentation logic layer (the view model) and the business model layer (model) are decoupled from each other. Other benefits include testability and the fact that designers and developers can work concurrently and independently.
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Custom authorization in WPF
Posted: March 24, 2013 Filed under: .NET, C#, Security, WPF | Tags: .NET, C#, IIdentity, IPrincipal, MVVM, WPF, XAML 52 CommentsThis post provides a code sample on how to implement your own custom authentication and authorization in a WPF application by implementing classes that derive from the IIdentity and IPrincipal interfaces and overriding the application thread’s default identity.
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How to create a custom window in WPF
Posted: March 16, 2013 Filed under: Custom Controls, WPF | Tags: .NET, C#, Custom Controls, Visual Studio, WPF 90 CommentsThis introductory post will provide a walkthrough on how to create your own custom looking window control with resize, drag, minimize, restore and close functionality and how to use it in your WPF applications.
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Magnus Montin 