Question

I am trying to access a Grid inside the DataTemplate while the ItemsControl is binded by ItemsSource.

this is the full XMAL code, How do i find a certain element from outside?

for (int i = 0; i < allViewControl.Items.Count; i++)
{
 var container =  allViewControl.ItemContainerGenerator.ContainerFromItem(allViewControl.Items[i]) as FrameworkElement;
 var grid = allViewControl.ItemTemplate.FindName("grid", container) as DataGrid;
}

i found this always returning null ?

<ScrollViewer Grid.Row="0" HorizontalScrollBarVisibility="Disabled" VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Auto">
    <ItemsControl  x:Name="allViewControl" Focusable="False" HorizontalContentAlignment="Center"
     Grid.IsSharedSizeScope="true" ItemsSource="{Binding AllClassCharacters}" 
     ItemTemplate="{StaticResource CharacterViewModelTemplate}"  >
        <ItemsControl.ItemsPanel>
            <ItemsPanelTemplate>
                <Extensions:AnimatedWrapPanel  IsItemsHost="true" />
            </ItemsPanelTemplate>
        </ItemsControl.ItemsPanel>
    </ItemsControl>
</ScrollViewer>



 <DataTemplate x:Key="CharacterViewModelTemplate" DataType="{x:Type ViewModel:CharacterViewModel}">
            <Grid x:Name="grid" Width="200" Height="Auto" MinHeight="115" Margin="1" MinWidth="130" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" RenderTransformOrigin="0.5,0.5" Background="#66000000"     >
                <Grid.RowDefinitions>
                    <RowDefinition Height="70"/>
                    <RowDefinition Height="*"/>
                </Grid.RowDefinitions>
                <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
                    <ColumnDefinition Width="*" />
                    <ColumnDefinition Width="*" />
                </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
            <ProgressBar x:Name="playerProgressBar" VerticalAlignment="Top" Background="Transparent" Height="5" Width="Auto" Value="0" Visibility="Collapsed" Grid.Column="0" Grid.Row="0" Grid.ColumnSpan ="2" Grid.RowSpan="2" Foreground="White" BorderThickness="0" Style="{DynamicResource ProgressBarStyle1}" />
</Grid>

Answer 1

Short answer is that you shouldn’t need to do this – using MVVM should give you simpler solutions to whatever you’re trying to achieve.

If you need it for some niche cases like setting the focus, search for ‘find control wpf’ on so – there are some existing questions (example) to hack and get controls out of the WPF UI Tree