ServiceBehavior

Behavior as a service in a WPF app.

Code highly inspired by DevExpress documentation.

How to use

• Create a new interface (ie: IMyCustomService) for your behavior that implements IServiceBehavior and expose whatever you want to expose.
• Change the inheritance of an existing behavior from Behavior<T> to ServiceBehavior<T>, IMyCustomService.
• Make sure your ViewModel implements ISupportServices. You can see an example in BaseViewModel.cs.
• You can now call GetService<IMyCustomService>() from your ViewModel to get access to your service and call whatever is exposed.

How it works

When Services (derived from the ServiceBehavior class) are registered in a View, they analyze their DataContext. If the DataContext is set to an ISupportServices object, a service registers itself within this object. This is accomplished by calling the IServiceContainer.RegisterService method on the ISupportServices.ServiceContainer object. Thus, the service becomes available for use within the ISupportServices object via the IServiceContainer.GetService<T> method.

Downsides

• You need to pass the IServiceContainer to sub-viewModels.