Programming Articles

Unlike MVC or Web Forms, when using WPF, you don't get a pre-built security system. Thus, you need to come up with your own method of securing controls on WPF screens, such as the one shown in Figure 1. There are a few different methods to accomplish this goal. For example, you can create different properties in your View model to make controls invisible or disabled based on a user's role. The problem with this approach is that if you need to secure more controls, you need to change the code and then redistribute your WPF application to your users. In this article, I'm going to take a data-driven approach to security so you can make changes in a database table and have your WPF application's security update without having to make code changes.

In the previous articles in this series on building a WPF business application (check www.CODEMag.com for the others), you created a new WPF business application using a pre-existing architecture. You added code to display a message while loading resources in the background. You also learned how to load and close user controls on a main window. You built a login screen, a user feedback screen, and a user maintenance screen to display a list of users, and the detail for a single user. In this article, you're going to finish this user maintenance screen by learning to manage button state, and to add, edit, and delete users.

In part 3 of this series, you'll build a user feedback screen to allow a user to submit feedback about the application. You build a view model and bind an Entity Framework entity class to the screen. The entity class contains data annotations and you learn to display validation messages from any data annotations that fail validation. You also start learning how to build a design pattern for standard add, edit, and delete screens. You build a user list control and a user detail control to display all users in a table, and the detail for each one you click on.

In Part 2 of this series, you're going to display a status message by sending a message from a View Model class to the main window. You're going to reuse the splash screen area that you built in Part 1 to display informational messages. A timer will be used to have these informational messages disappear after a specific amount of time. Finally, you'll create a WPF login screen with an image, a title area, and input fields for a user name and password. The user name and password data is validated and appropriate validation messages are displayed to the user.

When building any kind of application, it's important to start with a good architecture, a set of reusable helper classes, and design patterns. In this first of a multi-part series of articles, you'll learn to use a message broker to eliminate strong coupling between classes. You'll see how to display status and informational messages to the user while resources are loading. Instead of having a ton of open windows, you'll learn to load user controls onto a single window and how to aggregate controls and build large screens.

Using user controls for each of your screens is a great way to build WPF applications. Instead of having multiple windows pop-up on a user's screen, each user control can be loaded onto one main window. You do miss out on having the Minimize, Maximize, and Close buttons that a WPF window provides with this method. That's an easy situation to rectify and is the subject of this article.

There are many examples of using the Windows Presentation Foundataion (WPF) Tree View that you can find on the Web, however, most of them only show you how to go to two levels. What if you have more than two levels? This is where it's vital to understand exactly how the Hierarchical Data Templates work. In this article, I'm going to break down how these templates work, so you can really understand what's going on underneath the hood.

In Part 1 of this article you learned how to create a Windows 8 look and feel for your WPF applications. In Part 2 of this article you learned to create a few of the user controls that went into making the shell application. In this final article in this series, you will learn how to create the last few user controls that I used to create the Windows 8 Shell application. In this article, you will learn to put together a WPF Image button, an Image button with text and finally the main Tiles used for the primary navigation system.

In part 1 of this article, you learned how to create a Windows 8 look and feel for your WPF applications. You were shown a high-level overview of the various components that made up the shell for navigating. In part 2 of this article you will learn to create a WPF Button user control, a Message Box you can style, and a simple Message Broker System. All of these components are used to create the 'Windows 8 Style' WPF shell you learned about in part 1.

Many people will not be able to upgrade to Windows 8 right away for various reasons. However, there is nothing to stop you from designing your WPF applications to have a similar look and feel. In this article I will show you how to create a Windows 8 style shell (Figure 1) for hosting 'Tiles' that you can use to launch features of your application. The first part of this article will discuss how to create the main window, use the tiles to launch applications and how to navigate around the shell. In the second part of this article you will learn about the different user controls used to build this application.

In a WPF application I am building right now, I have a need to create different shapes and center text within those shapes. The shapes I need are rectangles, circles, ellipses and triangles. The problem is WPF shapes are not containers so you cannot add any text inside of them, but WPF is flexible enough that there are often several ways to work around this. In this article, I will show you a few different methods of centering text in each of these shapes.

If you have not taken a look at Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) yet, you really should. WPF is a great desktop development platform. Granted, all of the tools are not yet in place, but Microsoft is pouring millions of dollars into developing WPF tools. Microsoft now considers Windows Forms a legacy technology and they won't update it within