Pro WPF in C# 2008: Windows Presentation Foundation with .NET 3.5, Second Edition

Data Binding Basics

At its simplest, data binding is a relationship that tells WPF to extract some information from a source object and use it to set a property in a target object. The target property is always a dependency property, and it's usually in a WPF element—after all, the ultimate goal of WPF data binding is to display some information in your user interface. However, the source object can be just about anything, ranging from another WPF element to an ADO.NET data object (like the DataTable and DataRow) or a data-only object of your own creation. In this chapter, you'll begin your exploration of data binding by considering the simplest approach (element-to-element binding) and then considering how to use data binding with other types ...