Quick reminder on How-To map items of a list view to a VM command
The problem is really simple, but sometimes I see people tend to forget a little bit how the DataContext works in WPF and being stuck in wandering why a command is not invoked when a button inside a DataTemplate is pressed.
Suppose you have a ListView bounds to a list of items called SingleResult, for each SingleResult I have a complex layout and the main ViewModel contains a command that expect a SingleResult parameter called ShowDetails that simply shows the details of a SingleResult item. I see people do binding in this way.
Figure 1: Code to bind a button to a command
When the program runs this is the UI.
Figure 2: The UI in action.
Now clicking on the Details button makes nothing to happen. The reason is quite simple, with the syntax in Figure 1, you are actually binding the command to the ShowDetails command of the SingleResult item bound to that row.
This happens because the code is inside a DataTemplate , and the DataContext is the specific object used to render the row. In an good MVVM scenario the SingleResultobject should have ShowDetails command and everything works good, but if you prefer to define the command to the main ViewModel, you need to change the syntax in this way.
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This code works because the command is bound to the ShowDetails defined on the DataContext of the ancestor of type Window, thus, actually binding to the main ViewModel.
Alk.
Tags: MVVM