WPF DataGrid: Binding DataGridColumn visibility to ContextMenu MenuItems IsChecked (MVVM)

Question

I want to control DataGrid column visibility through a ContextMenu available to the user by right-clicking the column header. The ContextMenu

Answer 1

I've been looking for a generic, XAML (i.e., no code-behind), automatic and simple example of a column chooser context menu that binds to a WPF DataGrid column header. I've read literally hundreds of articles, but none of them seem to do exactly the right thing, or they're no generic enough. So here's what I think is the best combined solution:

First, put these in the resource dictionary. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to write the Visibility/Boolean converter to ensure the checkboxes check when the column is visible and vice-versa. Note that by defining x:Shared="False" for the context menu resource, it'll get instance-specific state which means that you can use this single template/resource for all your datagrids and they'll all maintain their own state.

Then define the DataGrid as follows (where OrdersQuery is some data source exposed by the View-model):

This will give you the following:

1. A context menu bound to the column headings which acts as a column chooser.
2. A context menu bound to the items in the grid (to perform actions on the items themselves - again, the binding of the actions is an exercise for the reader).

Hope this helps people who've been looking for an example like this.