Mastering Windows Presentation Foundation

Debunking the myth about code behind

One of the great misconceptions about MVVM is that we should avoid putting any code into the code behind files of our Views. While there is some truth to this, it is certainly not true in all situations. If we think logically for a moment, we already know that the main reason to use MVVM is to take advantage of the Separation of Concerns that its architecture provides. Part of this separates the business functionality in the View Model from the user interface-related code in the Views. Therefore, the rule should really be we should avoid putting any business logic into the code behind files of our Views.

Keeping this in mind, let's look at what code we might want to put into the code behind file of a View. The ...