WPF Custom Control

I have been working on a WPF side project at work and wanted to make a quick note about creating and consuming WPF user controls. My example was much more replete with details but i was more interested in making a note of the code that ties your XAML directly to the code.

So you create control in the normal VS type of way and this will give you a really basic XAML page (I have removed some of the distracting details). I have dropped a label on the screen as this will serve as the control that I will programmatically manipulate.

<UserControl
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
    x:Class="MyNameSpage.Dog"
    x:Name="UserControl"
    Width="Auto" Height="Auto" mc:Ignorable="d">

    <Canvas x:Name="ParentCanvas" PreviewMouseMove="ButtonMove" OpacityMask="#FF000000">
        <Label>Column="0" Grid. x:Name="NameLabel"  >ENGINEER</Label>
    </Canvas>
</UserControl>

and here is the associated partial class that documents our implementation code.

public partial class Dog
{
	public static readonly DependencyProperty DogsNameProperty = 
		DependencyProperty.Register("Dogs Name", typeof(string), typeof(Dog), 
		 new FrameworkPropertyMetadata(DogsNamePropertyChange));

	public string DogsName
	{
		get
		{
			return (string)base.GetValue(DogsNameProperty);
		}
		set
		{
			base.SetValue(DogsNameProperty, value);
		}
	}
	
	private static void DogsNamePropertyChange(DependencyObject source, 
		DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
	{
		(source as Dog).NameLabel.Content = (source as Dog).DogsName;
	}
}

• Basically we register the property using the DependencyProperty.Register method
• We make it publicly accessible via the DogsName property
• We monitor changes DogsNamePropertyChange

Simple!