Is there a way to use data-template inheritance in WPF?

Question

Is it possible to have DataTemplate composition or inheritance (similar to \"BasedOn\" in Styles)? There are 2 instances where I need that.

1. For

Answer 1

@Fragilerus and @Liz, actually I think I did come up with something better. Here's another approach that not only avoids the extra ContentPresenter binding, but also removes the need to have to apply a template within a template since the shared content is direct content which is set at compile-time. The only thing that happens at run-time would be the bindings you set inside the direct content. As such, this greatly speeds up the UI when compared to the other solution.

Important: Make sure to use the x:Shared attribute on your shared content or this will not work.

The WPF'y Way

The above said, this really isn't the most WPF-friendly way to do what you're after. That can be achieved using the DataTemplateSelector class which does exactly that... select's a data template based on whatever criteria you set.

For instance, you could easily set one up that looks for your known data types and returns the same DataTemplate for both of them, but for all other types, it falls back to the system to resolve the DataTemplate. That's what we actually do here.

Hope this helps! :)