Question

I am a little confused about WPF attached properties. When you use an attached property that attached property can only be read and used by the class that defines it correct? For example if I wanted to use some attached property as a hover color on a button, can I get the attached property value from the button’s template, and will I be able access the attached property from the button to set the hoover color?

Answer 1

Have you read the overview? If not, do it.

Attached properties, like dependency properties, just register another key that can be used in the properties dictionary of controls. You can set values anywhere and you can retrieve them anywhere, they are not restricted by type. This means that you may only want it to be set on Buttons but it can be set on TextBoxes too.

Every control has its own dictionary of property keys and values, an attached property allows you to write a value to those dictionaries using a new key. As those dictionaries are independent they can have separate values for the same property which is set and accessed via the static field property declaration.

As those properties are attached you will have to get the values via the GetValue (as the classes cannot provide a CLR-wrapper themselves).