patterns & practices: Composite WPF

New Post: Container Hierarchy

jwalklin — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:39:53 GMT

Hi Tschaena & WMeints,

You can implement the equivalent the equivalent of the WorkItemController in your Composite WPF App. Simply implement a plain old C# class and add in to your container. If using the Unity Container and you want only one instance within the container, just register your type with a ContainerControlledLifetimeManager. See the OrdersController in the StockTraderRI.Modules.Position project for an example. You can accomplish all the equivalent functionality as provided by the WorkItemController in this manner.

Registering your controller...

_container.RegisterType<IOrdersController, OrdersController>(new ContainerControlledLifetimeManager());

Injecting dependecies needed by your controller...

public class OrdersController : IOrdersController
{ ...
public OrdersController(IRegionManager regionManager, IUnityContainer container,
StockTraderRICommandProxy commandProxy, IAccountPositionService accountPositionService)

{ ...}
}

Using the controller...

public class PositionSummaryPresentationModel : IPositionSummaryPresentationModel, INotifyPropertyChanged
{ ...

public PositionSummaryPresentationModel(..., IOrdersController ordersController...) { ...}
}

Hope this helps. Jim

New Post: Container Hierarchy

WMeints — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:10:27 GMT

I'm considering to implement a module base class an workitem base class for CompositeWPFContrib, I will keep you posted on the progress.

New Post: EventPublication and EventSubscription

michaelsync — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 03:14:37 GMT

Hello,

1) I think that a way of using event publication and event subscription mechanism has been changed in Prism. May I know why? If it's still the same, Could you please give me an example how to use SCSF style "event subscription and event publication" in Prism?

2) The following is the way that we used to use in SCSF. How can I get the same in Prism?

[EventSubscription(EventTopicNames.CustomerSelected, ThreadOption.UserInterface)]
public void WorkWithCustomer(object sender, EventArgs<Customer> e)
{

}

[EventPublication(EventTopicNames.CustomerSelected, PublicationScope.Global)]
public event EventHandler<EventArgs> CustomerSelected;

public void WorkWithCustomer(Customer customer)
{
        if (CustomerSelected != null)
            CustomerSelected(this, new EventArgs<Customer>(customer));
}

3) Why do I need to create my own event class and my own eventargs class in order to use the event pub/sup in Prism? We tried to create one generic event class "SimpleAction" and generic eventargs "SimplePayLoad" in our project. The problem is that we can't specify the id of event. How can I specify the id of event? 


Thanks in advance.

New Post: Container Hierarchy

tschaena — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 19:40:36 GMT

Hi WMeints,

Sure, Unity does support a container hierarchy. But since Composite WPF does not seem to support multiple containers with special classes, I'm forced to write my own kind of "WorkItemController" for Unity (Let's call it UnityContainerController ;-)). Anyway, this problem seems solvable...

New Post: Multiple views of the same data

CodeHulk — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 19:40:25 GMT

I have created the following items all contained in module Customer:

CustomerModel

ICustomerListPresenter/CustomerListPresenter
ICustomerListView/CustomerListView (Defined as a listbox)

ICustomerDetailPresenter/CustomerDetailPresenter
ICustomerDetailView/CustomerDetailView

ICustomerCompositePresenter/CustomerCompositePresenter
ICustomerCompositeView/CustomerCompositeView

These are self contained in there own module with no external references. When I load this in my main application everything is fine my composite view can come up with a customer list I double click on a fish and it brings up the details.

Now I want to add a Orders module. Assuming the orders module is set up exactly like the above but has a static reference to the Customer module. When I edit an order in details view, I want to have a combobox from which I can select my customer. Do I need to make a new CustomerComboListView to fill in here or is there a way to use CustomerListView?

Feel free to tell me I am going in a completely wrong direction on this, but also please tell me a better one if you feel this is the case. I didn't know if this was more of a wpf thing or a composite WPF thing.

New Post: Event publication/subscription and INotifyPropertyChanged

zi — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 18:30:20 GMT

Bull's eye. Thanks jwalklin. Changing List to ObservableCollection fixed the problem. I still have to go back and check several other places where I was using List<T> for similar situations and compare but for now that's all I needed.

New Post: Event publication/subscription and INotifyPropertyChanged

jwalklin — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 18:05:49 GMT

One quick suggestion - Try replacing List<Student> with System.Collections.ObjectModel.ObservableCollection<Student>. You should bind your ListBox to a collection of this type in WPF, when the collection is changing.

If this doesn't work, post your code and we'll see what's going on.

Created Issue: Can you provide Visio document (reverse engineered) with documentation?

BillKrat — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:32:32 GMT

I see that VSTS Rosario November 2007 CTP has reverse engineering capabilities for Visio, ref: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2488400&SiteID=1. Since you guys have the resources :) A few minutes on the CompositeWPF teams part to reverse engineer the existing code into a Visio document could save us hours (if not days). Not looking for any diagrams - just the objects so that I can create them....

New Post: Event publication/subscription and INotifyPropertyChanged

zi — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:24:11 GMT

I have following scenario.
1) StudentView has a listbox to display student names. DataContext of the view is bound to StudentModel within same module. StudentModel has a property StudentList returning List<Student>.
2) The property StudentList in turn gets its records from StudentDataService. StudentDataService publishes ListChanged event to notify changes.
3) StudentModel is a subscriber to ListChanged event. StudentModel also implements INotifyPropertyChanged interface to notify bound controls.

Stepping through the code, event publication/subscription works perfect. While in debugger, I can even see the conents of StudentList property being refreshed but the contents of ListBox on StudentView (.xaml) do not change. My implementation of INotifyPropertyChanged is fine since I have used it at other places successfully.

Any clues, what I am missing here.

Updated Wiki: New posts

mconverti — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 14:07:41 GMT

Updated Wiki: Regions

mconverti — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 14:07:12 GMT

Regions

Use the OutlookBar in your CompositeWPF (Prism) Applications

Version: All
Description: Article about the OutlookBar for Composite WPF applications.

Updated Wiki: Knowledge Base

mconverti — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 14:06:23 GMT

Composite Application Guidance for WPF Knowledge Base

The purpose of this Knowledge Base is categorize and organize blogs posts, CodePlex pages, CodePlex posts, etc that can be valuable for the community. With this kind of information organized the community will have a new place to search for help/guidance.

We are going to update this KB periodically. You will find highlighted in this page the new posts we are adding.

Below this you will find the categories in which we propose to organize the information. If you feel that some categories are missing, please leave us a comment with the proposed category.

New posts:

More...

New Post: UserControl (View) not being measured correctly when loaded into region

JasonTeale — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 01:25:34 GMT

YES! thanks so much for that. It did the trick. It still doesn't explain though, why it doesn't work with the default ItemsControl.ItemsPanel.

New Post: Outlook style regions

ejadib — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:32:01 GMT

Hi guys, I've just blogged about how to use the OutlookBar in CompositeWPF applications.
Hope you find the post useful.

Use the OutlookBar in your CompositeWPF (Prism) Applications

Feeback is welcome.

Ezequiel Jadib
http://blogs.southworks.net/ejadib

New Post: UserControl (View) not being measured correctly when loaded into region

BillKrat — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 23:30:55 GMT

Great news!! Thanks for providing the steps for us (as well as the link); when it's my turn I trust it will save me a lot of time :)

New Post: UserControl (View) not being measured correctly when loaded into region

robertwsmith — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 21:55:18 GMT

Bill,

I found solution to the problem by looking around at some of the other issues on this website. There was a post at http://www.codeplex.com/CompositeWPF/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=28522 that discussed an issue with getting the View to take up all the space available in the Shell. I figured this solution might help me out so I tried it. Everything is working like I want now.

Before, in the Shell, I had a StackPanel with the ItemsControl inside it. This was the MainRegion (This is how all the examples are for CompositeWPF). Whenever I loaded my View into this region, it wouldn't automatically take up the available space. Also, when the ListView in the View was filled with data, it would expand beyond view. Anyway, based on the above link:

1. In the Shell, I changed the StackPanel to a DockPanel and had it take up all available space.
2. In the Shell, I changed the ItemsControl to be docked to Top of DockPanel and set the ItemsControl.ItemsPanel to have a template of DockPanel. This is what was discussed in the View.
3. In my View that gets loaded, I got rid of all the MinHeight, MaxHeight stuff so that it would expand fully when loaded into MainRegion.
4. After this, when the View was loaded, it correctly took up all the space in the containing DockPanel. Also, when ListView was filled with data, it honors the bounds of the container and doesn't stretch beyone view.

HOORAY!!!! Not sure why this all works, but it does.

- Rob

New Post: UserControl (View) not being measured correctly when loaded into region

BillKrat — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:12:07 GMT

Hi Rob,

Do you have the time to slap together a small prototype that will help us visualize the problem? We (the community and perhaps the CompositeWPF team) can use it to come up with a solution that will help others now, and in the future. I'm currently doing Bill Steeles 18 part webcast on WPF; perhaps one of them will hold the answer...

EDITED: [Rob] 6. However, the real problem is not with the Shell changing sizes, but the Listview changes sizes and ignoring the bounds of the container. For example, I launch the program and Shell is shown and View from Module is loaded into the MainRegion. When I fill the ListView with data, the ListView expands and ignores the bounds of the MainRegion. It just expands outside the form and no Scrollbar is provided on the ListView. During all of this, the Shell size is not changing at all and therefore no event is fired here.

If I understand your scenario correctly you should configure a height for your listbox (so that it is within the bounds of your container) and as the number of items grow the scrollbar will appear. Then the event subscription can be used to resize your listbox (which now has a configured height) so that it will be anchored to the container. I think I have enough to address this issue - I'll see if I can't crank out a solution and blog it this evening...

New Post: UserControl (View) not being measured correctly when loaded into region

robertwsmith — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:52:40 GMT

Bill,

Thanks for your detailed idea. I tried to implement your suggestions, but it is still not giving the desired result. Here are some points about what I did.

1. The CompositeWPF DOES include event pub/sub mechanism already, so there was no need to add in the extensions and such from Unity project.
2. I added a new Event to my Infrastructure project to be used by the Shell and module with View that needs to be notified when Shell size changes.
3. In the Shell, I hooked up the event for SizeChanged and published the SizeChangedEventArgs with the new event.
4. In the Module with the View containing ListView, I subscribed to the size changed event from the Shell.
5. I do receive the events when Shell size changes, and I can modify the ListView Height.
6. However, the real problem is not with the Shell changing sizes, but the Listview changes sizes and ignoring the bounds of the container. For example, I launch the program and Shell is shown and View from Module is loaded into the MainRegion. When I fill the ListView with data, the ListView expands and ignores the bounds of the MainRegion. It just expands outside the form and no Scrollbar is provided on the ListView. During all of this, the Shell size is not changing at all and therefore no event is fired here.
7. I think you may be on to something with the event mechanism, but the Shell SizeChanged event doesn't seem to be the correct place to plug-in to fix this issue.
8. I definitely think that something must be going on in the CompositeWPF code that is causing this. I don't have these problems if I just create a normal WPF application and add a UserControl to a Panel or something without using CompositeWPF.

I sure wish someone from the CompositeWPF team would comment on this or provide some guidance...

Rob

New Post: Container Hierarchy

WMeints — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:35:37 GMT

Hi tschaena,

It is possible to create child container in prism, this is a default feature of Unity and allows the same scheme to be implemented as provided in CAB.
One possible scenario would be something like this:

{{
public class MyModule: IModule
{
private IUnityContainer _container;

public MyModule(IUnityContainer parentContainer)
{
_container = parentContainer.CreateChildContainer();
}

protected UnityContainer Container
{
get { return _container; }
}

public void Initialize()
{

}
}
}}

New Post: UserControl (View) not being measured correctly when loaded into region

BillKrat — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 21:36:57 GMT

I have a solution but please bear in mind that it may not be the correct solution; currently I'm investing my time in learning WPF and Unity and once I have them under my belt will attack the CompositeWPF (I should then know what I'm looking at); although I did cheat and had to figure out / understand how the RegionManager worked before I could move on  ;)

For anyone who wants to visualize the problem:

1. Load the Commanding solution and change the Commanding.Modules.Order project's PresentationModels\OrdersEditorPresentationModel.cs InitialOrdersCount constant int from 3 to 25 - when you run the app you'll find the listbox has no scrollbars and it extends below the visible grid cell area (there will be 25 items in the list versus 3).

2. First we'll fix the scrollbar issue - Views\OrdersEditorView.xaml.   Update the ListView element by adding x:Name="ListView1" and change the Height attribute from "Auto" to "200"; the listview will have scrollbars and fit nicely in the Grid cell.

3. The solution lies in Event notification - the view is nicely decoupled from the shell so it doesn't know when the shell size changes (perhaps the CompositeWPF framework has something to notify???); we'll let it know so that we can adjust the ListView1 height accordingly.  Let's get two very useful Unity Projects (Event processing may be in CompositeWPF but again, I do not know it yet :)
     a. Load the EventBrokerExtension and SimpleEventBroker projects from the latest Unity download (UnityQuickStarts\language\EventBroker\Src).
     b. Set references to each in the Commanding and Commanding.Modules.Order projects

4. In the Commanding project's CommandBootStrapper.CreateShell method add the following statement before the Shell shell statement:
     Container.AddNewExtension<SimpleEventBrokerExtension>(); // and add using/imports as applicable

5. Update your Commanding Shell XAML so that it will notify code behind when the size has changed:

     <Window x:Class="Commanding.Shell"
         xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
         xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
         xmlns:cal="http://www.codeplex.com/CompositeWPF"
         Title="Shell" Height="385" Width="500" MinHeight="385"
         SizeChanged="Window_SizeChanged"
         >

6.  Update the Shell's code behind as follows:

        [Publishes("ShellSizeChanged")]
        public event EventHandler ShellSizeChanged;

        public Shell()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        private void Window_SizeChanged(object sender, SizeChangedEventArgs e)
        {
            if (ShellSizeChanged != null)
                ShellSizeChanged(sender, e);
        }

7. Update the OrdersEditorView code behind as follows:

        [SubscribesTo("ShellSizeChanged")]
        public void OnSizeChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            SizeChangedEventArgs args = e as SizeChangedEventArgs;
            ListView1.Height = args.NewSize.Height-160;
        }

If we (you or I) didn't miss anything, when you resize the form your ListView1 control will resize accordingly

patterns & practices: Composite WPF

New Post: Container Hierarchy

New Post: Container Hierarchy

New Post: EventPublication and EventSubscription

New Post: Container Hierarchy

New Post: Multiple views of the same data

New Post: Event publication/subscription and INotifyPropertyChanged

New Post: Event publication/subscription and INotifyPropertyChanged

Created Issue: Can you provide Visio document (reverse engineered) with documentation?

New Post: Event publication/subscription and INotifyPropertyChanged

Updated Wiki: New posts

New posts

Updated Wiki: Regions

Regions

Updated Wiki: Knowledge Base

Composite Application Guidance for WPF Knowledge Base

Categories:

New posts:

New Post: UserControl (View) not being measured correctly when loaded into region

New Post: Outlook style regions

New Post: UserControl (View) not being measured correctly when loaded into region

New Post: UserControl (View) not being measured correctly when loaded into region

New Post: UserControl (View) not being measured correctly when loaded into region

New Post: UserControl (View) not being measured correctly when loaded into region

New Post: Container Hierarchy

New Post: UserControl (View) not being measured correctly when loaded into region