WPF Databinding to existing objects

[Nate Bross]

Maybe this is a silly question, but I can't seem to find the answer.

 

How can I use WPF Databinding (Datacontext) to bind to an existing business object?

 

I have seen plenty of examples that impliment INotifyPropertyChanged, how can I databind if I cannot change these objects to impliment this interface?

 

TIA

[PlausiblyDamp]

Are you looking to do a one way databinding? i.e. just displaying information or also allowing updates to be sent back?

[Nate Bross]

Ideally it would be two way databinding.

 

I'm looking for anything to get me started using my existing objects.

 

As a side note for future projects, I'd be interested in how I should be writing my business objects for future so that they will support WPF databinding.

[Nate Bross]

From the MSDN Documentation it looks like I need to impliment Dependency Properties in order to achieve true databinding functionallity.

 

This is the sample code that is provided from MSDN:

 

public static readonly DependencyProperty IsSpinningProperty = 
   DependencyProperty.Register(
   "IsSpinning", typeof(Boolean),
...
   );

public bool IsSpinning
{
   get { return (bool)GetValue(IsSpinningProperty); }
   set { SetValue(IsSpinningProperty, value); }
}

 

Do me this seems like double work, am I missing something? It looks like all that happens is the Dependency Property replaces the local variable I would have used, but instead now I must do extra converting in my get/set blocks.

 

I'd appreciate other's thoughts on this.

[PlausiblyDamp]

It does initially seem a bit more work, however in the long run WPF does provide a lot more functionality for you if you implement dependency properties. e.g. A designer using Expression could attach an animation that is triggered by your property changing or an animation could modify your property on completion...

[Nate Bross]

So in general there is not a more elegant version of the code I posted from MSDN?

 

Is there any performance loss by doing things this way?

[Nate Bross]

Maybe this should be a new thread, but what is the difference between these Dependency Properties and using INotifyPropertyChanged?