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Programming WPF, 2nd Edition
book

Programming WPF, 2nd Edition

by Chris Sells, Ian Griffiths
August 2007
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
864 pages
25h 52m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Programming WPF, 2nd Edition

Properties

In Example A-1, we set the Window element's Title property. This property's type was String. Pure text properties are a natural fit with XML, because XML is a text-based format. But what about other property types? Example A-13 uses a slightly wider range of types.

Example A-13. Nonstring properties

<Rectangle Width="100"
              Height="20"
              Stroke="Black"
              Fill="#80FF40EE" />

None of the properties set here is a string. Both Width and Height are of type Double, whereas both Stroke and Fill require a Brush. In order to support diverse property types, XAML relies on .NET's TypeConverter system. This has been around since v1.0 of .NET, and it is used in design-time scenarios. A TypeConverter maps between different representations of a value, most commonly between String and a property's native type.[120]

The Width and Height properties are converted using the LengthConverter type. (WPF knows to use this type because the FrameworkElement class's Width and Height properties are marked with a TypeConverterAttribute indicating which converter to use.) The BrushConverter class is used for the other two properties, because although they do not have a TypeConverterAttribute, they are of type Brush, and the Brush type has a TypeConverterAttribute indicating that BrushConverter should be used. Example A-14 illustrates how the attribute was applied in each case.

Example A-14. Specifying a TypeConverter

public class FrameworkElement : UIElement, ... {
    ...
    [TypeConverter(typeof(LengthConverter)) ...
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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780596510374Supplemental ContentErrata Page