Give some command to View in MVVM

Question

Let\'s imagine I have some user control. The user control has some child windows. And user control user wants to close child windows of some type. There is a method in user

Answer 1

I feel I just found a rather nice MVVM solution to this problem. I wrote a behavior that is exposing a type property WindowType and a boolean property Open. DataBinding the latter allows the ViewModel to open and close the windows easily, without knowing anything about the View.

Gotta love behaviors... :)

Xaml:

    
        
    
    
        
        
        
        
    
    
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YellowWindow (Black/Purple alike):

ViewModel, ActionCommand:

using System;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Windows.Input;

namespace WpfApplication1
{
    public class ViewModel : INotifyPropertyChanged
    {
        public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;
        private void OnPropertyChanged(string propertyName)
        {
            if (this.PropertyChanged != null)
                PropertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(propertyName));
        }

        private bool _blackOpen;
        public bool BlackOpen { get { return _blackOpen; } set { _blackOpen = value; OnPropertyChanged("BlackOpen"); } }

        private bool _yellowOpen;
        public bool YellowOpen { get { return _yellowOpen; } set { _yellowOpen = value; OnPropertyChanged("YellowOpen"); } }

        private bool _purpleOpen;
        public bool PurpleOpen { get { return _purpleOpen; } set { _purpleOpen = value; OnPropertyChanged("PurpleOpen"); } }

        public ICommand OpenBlackCommand { get; private set; }
        public ICommand OpenYellowCommand { get; private set; }
        public ICommand OpenPurpleCommand { get; private set; }


        public ViewModel()
        {
            this.OpenBlackCommand = new ActionCommand(OpenBlack);
            this.OpenYellowCommand = new ActionCommand(OpenYellow);
            this.OpenPurpleCommand = new ActionCommand(OpenPurple);
        }

        private void OpenBlack(bool open) { this.BlackOpen = open; }
        private void OpenYellow(bool open) { this.YellowOpen = open; }
        private void OpenPurple(bool open) { this.PurpleOpen = open; }

    }

    public class ActionCommand : ICommand
    {
        public event EventHandler CanExecuteChanged;
        private Action _action;

        public ActionCommand(Action action)
        {
            _action = action;
        }

        public bool CanExecute(object parameter) { return true; }

        public void Execute(object parameter)
        {
            if (_action != null)
            {
                var castParameter = (T)Convert.ChangeType(parameter, typeof(T));
                _action(castParameter);
            }
        }
    }
}

OpenCloseWindowBehavior:

using System;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Controls;
using System.Windows.Interactivity;

namespace WpfApplication1
{
    public class OpenCloseWindowBehavior : Behavior
    {
        private Window _windowInstance;

        public Type WindowType { get { return (Type)GetValue(WindowTypeProperty); } set { SetValue(WindowTypeProperty, value); } }
        public static readonly DependencyProperty WindowTypeProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("WindowType", typeof(Type), typeof(OpenCloseWindowBehavior), new PropertyMetadata(null));

        public bool Open { get { return (bool)GetValue(OpenProperty); } set { SetValue(OpenProperty, value); } }
        public static readonly DependencyProperty OpenProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("Open", typeof(bool), typeof(OpenCloseWindowBehavior), new PropertyMetadata(false, OnOpenChanged));

        /// 

        /// Opens or closes a window of type 'WindowType'.
        /// 
        private static void OnOpenChanged(DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
        {
            var me = (OpenCloseWindowBehavior)d;
            if ((bool)e.NewValue)
            {
                object instance = Activator.CreateInstance(me.WindowType);
                if (instance is Window)
                {
                    Window window = (Window)instance;
                    window.Closing += (s, ev) => 
                    {
                        if (me.Open) // window closed directly by user
                        {
                            me._windowInstance = null; // prevents repeated Close call
                            me.Open = false; // set to false, so next time Open is set to true, OnOpenChanged is triggered again
                        }
                    }; 
                    window.Show();
                    me._windowInstance = window;
                }
                else
                {
                    // could check this already in PropertyChangedCallback of WindowType - but doesn't matter until someone actually tries to open it.
                    throw new ArgumentException(string.Format("Type '{0}' does not derive from System.Windows.Window.", me.WindowType));
                }
            }
            else 
            {
                if (me._windowInstance != null)
                    me._windowInstance.Close(); // closed by viewmodel
            }
        }
    }
}