WPF CollectionViewSource Multiple Views?

Question

I\'ve written a Custom WPF Control with search extension, let\'s name it MyControl. The Control is a descendent of an ItemsControl class.

Answer 1

In situations like this you would generally want to create a separate ICollectionView instance for each differently filtered usage of the collection. It's not a good idea to use a specific implementation of ICollectionView since it's possible for the CollectionView type needed to change if the ItemsSource is bound to a different type of collection. Using

 ICollectionView filteredView = new CollectionViewSource { Source=newValue }.View;

will give you an ICollectionView that's the correct type automatically.

Unfortunately, what you may find in this case is that it is very difficult to apply a different collection to the ItemsPresenter of your custom control since all of that magic is done for you by the base ItemsControl class and relies on the ItemsSource/Items properties which it manages. This happens when using something similar to ItemsControl's default template.

If you are in fact using a separate ListBox control (and TemplateBinding all the ItemsSource properties if you need them) inside your ControlTemplate then you should be able to simply add a new ICollectionView DP (I'd recommend read-only) on your control to hold your filtered version of the collection and bind the template ListBox's ItemsSource to that new property.