C# 2010 All-in-One For Dummies®

Chapter 4. Practical WPF

In This Chapter

• Commanding attention

• Getting your ViewModel on

Even though WPF still supports the direct event handler wire up (for example, through the OnClick event), WPF introduces a much better mechanism for responding to user events. It significantly reduces the amount of code you have to write and adds testability to your application. Traditional event handling is all contained in the code-behind for your form, which is extremely difficult to test in an automated fashion.

Software patterns have been around for a long time, first brought to the forefront by the classic tome Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vissides — commonly referred to as the "Gang of Four." Software has evolved and many new patterns have been developed over the years. One of the most effective user interface patterns developed for WPF is the Model-View-View Model pattern (commonly referred to as ViewModel). Using the ViewModel pattern in your WPF applications will improve software reuse, testability, readability, maintainability, and most of the other "ilities" as well.

Commanding Attention

The Command Pattern has been around since, well, forever, and you most likely use it every day. Copy and Paste commands are example implementations of the pattern built into Windows and most Windows applications. WPF provides a significant number of built-in commands and also allows for completely customized commands! ...