Question

I am trying my hands on WPF MVVM. I have written following code in XAML

<UserControl x:Class="Accounting.Menu"
             xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
             xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
             xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" 
             xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"  
             xmlns:local="clr-namespace:Accounting"
             mc:Ignorable="d" 
             d:DesignHeight="105" d:DesignWidth="300">
    <UserControl.DataContext>
        <local:MenuViewModel/>
    </UserControl.DataContext>
    <StackPanel>
       <StackPanel>
                <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=MenuHeader}"/>
       </StackPanel>
       <ListBox ItemsSource="{Binding Path=MenuItems}" Height="70"/>             
    </StackPanel>     
</UserControl>

I have got a MenuViewModel with properties MenuHeader and MenuItems. I get values in both the properties during runtime. Former is bound to text of TextBlock and latter to ItemSource of ListBox. But when I run the solution, TextBlock and ListBox are empty.

Edit: Code of ViewModel

  public class MenuViewModel: ViewModelBase
    {
        AccountingDataClassesDataContext db;

        private string _menuType;
        public string MenuHeader { get; set; }
        public ObservableCollection<string> MenuItems { get; set; }

        public MenuViewModel()
        { 

        }

        public MenuViewModel(string menuType)
        {
            this._menuType = menuType;
            db = new AccountingDataClassesDataContext();
            if (menuType == "Vouchers")
            {
                var items = db.Vouchers.OrderBy(t => t.VoucherName).Select(v => v.VoucherName).ToList<string>();

                if (items.Any())
                {
                    MenuItems = new ObservableCollection<string>(items);
                    MenuHeader = "Vouchers";
                }
            }
            else
            {
                System.Windows.MessageBox.Show("Menu not found");
            }

        }
    }

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You are creating your ViewModel in the XAML using your ViewModel’s default contructor which does nothing. All your population code is in the non-default contructor which is never called.

The more usual way is to create the ViewModel in code, and inject it into the view either explicitly using View.DataContext = ViewModel, or impllcitly using a DataTemplate.