d:DesignInstance with an interface type

Question

I\'m binding an UI to an interface (which is implemented by several presenters, not accessible from the UI assembly).

I really like d:DesignInstance in designer beca

Answer 1

I have just investigated more or less the same question... Actually, what I did is to follow the principles of MvvMLight. Precisely, I used a ViewModelLocator (which will be more or less static) so that the "right" ViewModel is injected at runtime or at design time. The magic lies in the function ViewModelBase.IsInDesignModeStatic provided by the MvvMLight framework. Finally, my ViewModelLocator class looks like

public class ViewModelLocator
    {
        private static readonly IKernel _kernel;

        static ViewModelLocator()
        {
            _kernel = new StandardKernel();
            if (ViewModelBase.IsInDesignModeStatic)
            {
                 _kernel.Bind().To();
            }
            else
            {
                _kernel.Bind().To();
            }
        }

        public IBasicVM BasicVm { get { return _kernel.Get(); } }
    }

You may ignore the Ninject _kernel but you may need it (or a similar Ioc) if you are building your ViewModels with an IoC.

The App.xaml declares the ViewModelLocator as a ressource

The MainWindow.DataContext property is bound to the BasicVM member of the ViewModelLocator. The Text property is bound the the GetContent member of the interface IBasicVM which is recognized statically by R# (at least R# 7.1 with VS2012)

You may check this repository which I have created as a template.