Well, as the title says this would be my last points on Data Binding. That doesn’t actually mean this is all there is in data binding. Kindly consider I only could share two or three lines from the preface of the book named “Data Binding”. But as we need to move forward I’m only sharing what’s essential to know.

So, back with the same example we had in our last post. If we remember things correctly we left the work at this stage:

If we remember correctly we used the button Update Data to update the data from C# code behind. What if we want to write something in the textboxes and want to update the data by clicking the button Update Data. Only this time the new Data would be what I write in the textboxes.

So, lets see what we did before first approach that might come to your head is to write something like this:

 private void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            _personModel.Name =Name.Text;
            _personModel.Age = Age.Text;
            _personModel.Height = Height.Text;
        }

Well, I don’t blame you. It’s fair to do so. But if we don’t want the button, we just want to type and it will update automatically? Well, I know, who wants that ?

But what if it’s a data field and we have next button to go to another field like we do have in installation wizards, we don’t need a update button in that case. So, lets rename the Update button to Read Data so we can check that the data is updated truly.  So, lets change the button name and change the “Button_Click” event as following:

        private void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            Name.Text = _personModel.Name;
            Age.Text = _personModel.Age;
            Height.Text = _personModel.Height;
        }

So, now it would read the data instead of writing it. Then who is going to write it!
Well, lets change the data binding mode to TwoWay and we’re done for the updating!

<Grid x:Name="ContentPanel" Grid.Row="1" Margin="12,0,12,0">
   <TextBox Height="70" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="0,130,0,0" Name="Name" Text="{Binding Name, Mode=TwoWay}" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="450" />
   <TextBox Height="72" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="0,206,0,0" Name="Age" Text="{Binding Age, Mode=TwoWay}" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="450" />
   <TextBox Height="72" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="0,284,0,0" Name="Height" Text="{Binding Height, Mode=TwoWay}" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="450" />
   <Button Content="Read Data" Click="Button_Click" Margin="0,361,0,159" ></Button>
</Grid>

You see what I did here is, I changed the Text Property of the Name TextBox control to Text=”{Binding Name, Mode=TwoWay}” and I changed all the TextBoxes accordingly allowing it to update the underlying data automatically when it’s changed. 🙂 No need for an update button.

DON’T USE IT IF YOU DON’T WANT TO CHANGE THE UNDERLYING DATA WITHOUT ANY CONFIRMATION.

So, you see the amazing thing here is all I changed is the binding mode. If I didn’t have to read this using the button we wouldn’t have needed any code practically.

Now Let’s get to see Element Binding a bit

Well, to demonstrate element binding what are we going to do is, we’re gonna put a slider control in our ContentPanel. Whenever we change the value of the slider we want to see that in a TextBlock. So we will get rid of all the textboxes and we will  insert a slider in our Windows Phone project.

So, you see, we added a TextBlock and a slider below and removed the button and textboxes that were here before.

So, our ContentPanel looks like this now.

        <Grid x:Name="ContentPanel" Grid.Row="1" Margin="12,0,12,0">
            <TextBlock Height="70"
                     HorizontalAlignment="Left"
                     Margin="10,130,0,0"
                     Name="ValueBox"
                     Text="TextBlock"
                     FontSize="36"
                     VerticalAlignment="Top"
                     TextAlignment="Center"
                     Width="436" />
            <Slider x:Name="HSlider" Orientation="Horizontal"
                    HorizontalAlignment="Left"
                    Height="172"
                    Margin="10,200,0,0"
                    VerticalAlignment="Top"
                    Width="436"
                    LargeChange="10"
                    SmallChange="1"
                    Minimum="0"
                    Maximum="100"
                    Value="50"

                    />
        </Grid>

Lets look at the xaml for a minute. You will see the slider named HSlider has a horizontal orientation and Minimum and Maximum value set from 0 to 100. What we want is we want to see the slider value on the textblock above, it should change as we change the slider. What’s the first approach comes to your mind. We can set a ValuChanged event in the slider and show the value in the textblock like this.

Adding a ValueChanged event in the XAML:

        <Grid x:Name="ContentPanel" Grid.Row="1" Margin="12,0,12,0">
            <TextBlock Height="70"
                     HorizontalAlignment="Left"
                     Margin="10,130,0,0"
                     Name="ValueBox"
                     Text="TextBlock"
                     FontSize="36"
                     VerticalAlignment="Top"
                     TextAlignment="Center"
                     Width="436" />
            <Slider x:Name="HSlider" Orientation="Horizontal"
                    HorizontalAlignment="Left"
                    Height="172"
                    Margin="10,200,0,0"
                    VerticalAlignment="Top"
                    Width="436"
                    LargeChange="10"
                    SmallChange="1"
                    Minimum="0"
                    Maximum="100"
                    Value="50"
                    ValueChanged="HSlider_ValueChanged_1"
                    />
        </Grid>

and write the event handler behind in MainPage.xaml.cs like this:

private void HSlider_ValueChanged_1(object sender, RoutedPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
        {
            if(HSlider!=null)
                this.ValueBox.Text = HSlider.Value.ToString();
        }

And if you build this and run it on the emulator or device, whenever you change the slider you will see it’s value in the textblock. But is that we wanted here? NOOOO!!

Let’s make things a bit simple. If we can bind the slider to textblock item we can instantly show the slider value on the textblock. No code needed whatsoever! And why we bind the slider to the textblock. Because here the textblock shows the data so the slider works here as the model and the textblock as view! So, the model is binded to the view!

Let’s chill and see the easiest trick here. Now our ContentPanel looks like this and we have got rid of the event handler named HSlider_ValueChanged_1 from MainPage.xaml.cs

        <Grid x:Name="ContentPanel" Grid.Row="1" Margin="12,0,12,0">
            <TextBlock Height="70"
                     HorizontalAlignment="Left"
                     Margin="10,130,0,0"
                     Name="ValueBox"
                     Text="{Binding Value, ElementName=HSlider}"
                     FontSize="36"
                     VerticalAlignment="Top"
                     TextAlignment="Center"
                     Width="436" />
            <Slider x:Name="HSlider" Orientation="Horizontal"
                    HorizontalAlignment="Left"
                    Height="172"
                    Margin="10,200,0,0"
                    VerticalAlignment="Top"
                    Width="436"
                    LargeChange="10"
                    SmallChange="1"
                    Minimum="0"
                    Maximum="100"
                    Value="50"

                    />
        </Grid>

See, the change we made here is that we changed the text property of the textblock into Text=”{Binding Value, ElementName=HSlider}” . Here, we binded the Value property of the Element HSlider.

😀 See? It’s really easy and see how much clean it looks now, all our job is done by only one line. That’s the magic of data binding.

So, this is it for now, Next we’re gonna talk a little about DataConverters. Till then ciao!