Programming WPF, 2nd Edition

Hosting a Windows Form Control in WPF

On top of this core functionality of the HwndHost class, deriving classes handle details germane to their specific framework. As of this writing, WPF exposes only one such specialization: the WindowsFormsHost class from the System.Windows.Forms.Integration namespace and the WindowsFormsIntegration assembly. The WindowsFormsHost class has properties for background, font, and tab index properties to provide integration at those points with WPF. Example B-1 shows how to declaratively add a WindowsFormsHost element to a Window.

Example B-1. Adding an HWND host to a WPF tree

<!-- Window1.xaml -->
<Window ...>
  <Grid>
    <WindowsFormsHost />
  </Grid>
</Window>

Example B-1 creates an instance of the WindowsFormsHost control, which introduces an HWND into WPF's tree, as shown in Figure B-3.

Figure B-3. Adding an HWND to a WPF application using the WindowsFormsHost

With an HWND injected into the WPF tree, we can now host a control from the HWND-based UI framework with which WPF integrates best: Windows Forms. For example, after adding a reference to the System.Windows.Forms assembly to the project, we can host a DataGridView control, as shown in Example B-2.

Example B-2. Hosting a Windows Forms DataGridView in WPF

<!-- Window1.xaml -->
<Window ...
  xmlns:wf="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Forms;assembly=System.Windows.Forms">
  <Grid>
    <WindowsFormsHost>
 <wf:DataGridView ...