WPFUtility

A bunch of useful stuff to work with in a WPF app

Features

ViewModel bases

You can easily create a ViewModel class by inheriting ViewModelBase, very similar to the DependencyProperty, with the addition to have the editable and validation handled :

class PersonViewModel : ViewModelBase
{
    // Some properties
    public int Age { get => (int)GetValue(nameof(Age)); set => SetValue(nameof(Age), value); }

    public string Name { get => (string)GetValue(nameof(Name)); set => SetValue(nameof(Name), value); }

    public string Surname { get => (string)GetValue(nameof(Surname)); set => SetValue(nameof(Surname), value); }

    //This stores more informations about the diffrent properties, in case a property needs more control
    protected override Dictionary<string, PropertyDetails> SpecialProperties { get; } = new()
    {
        {
            nameof(Age), // we add a special case for the age
            new PropertyDetails(
                defaultValue: 34, // Age is at 34 by default
                validationRule: newAge => // Verification that age is above or equal to 0
                {
                    if ((int)newAge < 0)
                        return new[] { new Error(0, "Age can't go under 0 !") };
                    else
                        return null;
                })
        }
    };
}

We can then have this XAML code in our MainWindow :

<StackPanel>
    <StackPanel.DataContext>
        <local:PersonViewModel />
    </StackPanel.DataContext>
    <Slider
        Minimum="-2"
        Maximum="99"
        Value="{Binding Path=Age}" />
    <TextBox
        Text="{Binding Path=Age}" />
</StackPanel>

Output :

There is also another view model base, for more niche cases, that listen to its INotifyPropertyChanged sub properties, that retriggers them.

For example, imagine two ViewModel, PersonViewModel and CityViewModel, where PersonViewModel contains CityViewModel under the City property. Any change to that city will trigger a PropertyChanged on the person, with the name City.Name for the property, if the name of the city changed.

Collections

The library contains many different collection view fully compatible with WPF. Each take a base collection (it can be an ObservableCollection or another collection view).

But why ? Because using only the base collection view, only one can be kinda great, the ListCollectionView since it can sort and filter easily. But this one takes an IList, but is not an IList itself ! With this lib, you can chain multiple view and they provide more utility.

• FilteredCollectionView : Filters the output view based on the source.
• SortedCollectionView : Sorts the output view based on the source.
• GroupCollectionView : Groups the items from the source based on a predicate.
• ExtendableCollectionView : A collection view that can extend its content by adding virtual items based on the actual items. Kinda like a tree view, but compatible with DataGrid for example.
• and more !

Controls

There is only 2 controls for now :

ActionIcon : used to create customized button icons by giving it attributes that change the final render.

For example, we got this resource : folder.png

We can create custom icons with this :

<uc:ActionIcon
    HorizontalAlignment="Left"
    Margin="5"
    BaseImage="/folder.png"
    Action="ADD" />

Ouput :

Highly customizable with many icons, with custom images or controls.

Another control is the DropdownButton for obvious reasons, this really should be in WPF in my opinion :

<uc:DropdownButton
    ShowDefaultButton="True">
    <uc:DropdownButton.Dropdown>
        <ContextMenu>
            <MenuItem
                Header="Add folder">
                <MenuItem.Icon>
                    <uc:ActionIcon
                        BaseImage="/folder.png"
                        Action="ADD" />
                </MenuItem.Icon>
            </MenuItem>
        </ContextMenu>
    </uc:DropdownButton.Dropdown>
    <Label
        Content="Create folder" />
</uc:DropdownButton>

Output :