Simple RadioButtonList and / or CheckBoxList in Silverlight Using a Behavior
Feb
23
Written by:
2/23/2011 12:47 AM
A problem I have encountered frequently on recent projects is needing an ASP.Net style RadioButtonList or CheckBoxList inside on a Silverlight application. I have tried several approaches and had moderate success given the varying scenarios of each attempt. It finally came to a point that the problem had to be solved once and for all. So after discussing it with a few of the guys on my team and doing some extra reading tonight, I have found a solution that I feel is worth sharing. This post will be a step-by-step guide to using the ToogleButtonListBoxBehavior that I have created inside of the OpenLightGroup.Common Library.
To follow this tutorial you will need to download the latest version of the OpenLightGroup.Common Library and add a reference to the included dll file. We will also be using Microsoft Blend; however, the behavior can be added in Visual Studio just as other behaviors.
- Drop a ToggleButtonListBoxBehavior onto the ListBox.
- Bind the ListBox ItemsSource property to a ViewModel (You may also us a DomainDataSource or any way you would like to populate the Items of the ListBox).
- Create a new template for the ListBox ItemTemplate.
- Create the template as a resource.
- Create a StackPanel in the template and place a TextBlock and RadioButton in it (You may also use a CheckBox or any other control that inherits from ToggleButton, see the notes at the end of the article).
- Bind the Text property of the TextBlock to the property that you would like displayed.
That is all there is too it! Since this is still just a ListBox, you can customize it any way you like (at least any way you could any other ListBox). There are a few things to keep in mind documented in the following notes section.
Notes:
- The ItemTemplate must contain a ToggleButton (this includes both RadioButton and CheckBox).
- This means you cannot use the DisplayMemberPath on your ListBox.
- Currently this behavior only uses the first ToggleButton it finds inside of the template.
- Each item in the ListBox will have at least two event handlers attached to it to handle Checking and Unchecking etc. This may have a negative impact on performance in long lists.
- If you are not finding the ToggleButtonListBoxBehavior in your assets lists, make you you have downloaded and added a reference to the latest OpenLightGroup.Common release.
- If you are interested in how this behavior works you can view the source code here.