CCPropGen

A .NET MAUI plugin that helps to create bindable properties for your custom controls.

Overview

When you create a custom control with the ContentView method, you may be interested in some bindable properties belonging to controls that are now hidden by the ContentView container.

CCPropGen allows you to create such properties with minimal effort.

Example

Let's consider our simple custom control, which is an Entry inside a ContentView.

CCPropGenEntry.xaml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<ContentView xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dotnet/2021/maui"
             xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2009/xaml"
             x:Class="CCPropGen.Maui.Demo.CCPropGenEntry">
    <Entry x:Name="EntryControl" />
</ContentView>

Let's assume we want to bind the Text property of EntryControl. Using CCPropGen we can easily create this property inside our custom control using an attribute.

CCPropGenEntry.xaml.cs

using Maui.CCPropGen;

namespace CCPropGen.Maui.Demo;

// Attribute parameters:
// - Control name
// - Control type
// - Property name
// - Property type
[CCPropGen("EntryControl", typeof(Entry), "Text", typeof(string))]
public partial class CCPropGenEntry : ContentView
{
    public CCPropGenEntry()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
        
        // Currently needed to set binding contexts correctly
        InitializeCCPropGen();
    }
}

Now our custom control has a Text property ready to be bound, that will be linked directly to the Text property of the Entry.

Generating multiple properties

We may want to create more than one bindable property for our Entry control. Let's bind MaxLength property, too.

The attribute can accept as arguments also two arrays containing properties names and properties types.

using Maui.CCPropGen;

namespace CCPropGen.Maui.Demo;

[CCPropGen(
    "EntryControl",
    typeof(Entry),
    new string[] { "Text", "MaxLength" },
    new Type[] { typeof(string), typeof(int) })] 
public partial class CCPropGenEntry : ContentView
{
    public CCPropGenEntry()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
        InitializeCCPropGen();
    }
}

Binding properties from different controls

Consider the case where you have a complex custom control, which in turn contains many other controls.

Decorating multiple times with CCPropGen attribute your code-behind class allows you to bind different properties from different controls.

MultipleControlsView.xaml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<ContentView xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/dotnet/2021/maui"
             xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2009/xaml"
             x:Class="CCPropGen.Maui.Demo.MultipleControlsView">
    <StackLayout>
        <Label x:Name="ControlLabel"
               Text="Test" />
        <Entry x:Name="ControlEntry" />
    </StackLayout>
</ContentView>

MultipleControlsView.xaml.cs

using Maui.CCPropGen;

namespace CCPropGen.Maui.Demo;

[CCPropGen("ControlEntry", typeof(Entry), "Text", typeof(string))]
[CCPropGen("ControlLabel", typeof(Label), "FontSize", typeof(double))]
public partial class MultipleControlsView : ContentView
{
    public MultipleControlsView()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
        InitializeCCPropGen();
    }
}