Question

I have an XML that needs to be databound to a WPF TreeView. Here the XML can have different structure. The TreeView should be databound generic enough to load any permutation of hierarchy. However an XAttribute on the nodes (called Title) should be databound to the TreeViewItem’s header text and not the nodename.

XML to be bound:

<Wizard>   <Section Title='Home'>     <Loop Title='Income Loop'>       <Page Title='Employer Income'/>       <Page Title='Parttime Job Income'/>       <Page Title='Self employment Income'/>     </Loop>   </Section>   <Section Title='Deductions'>     <Loop Title='Deductions Loop'>       <Page Title='Travel spending'/>       <Page Title='Charity spending'/>       <Page Title='Dependents'/>     </Loop>   </Section> </Wizard> 

XAML:

<Window x:Class='Wpf.DataBinding.TreeViewer'     xmlns='http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation'     xmlns:x='http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml'     xmlns:local='clr-namespace:Wpf.DataBinding'     Title='TreeViewer' Height='300' Width='300'>     <Window.Resources>         <HierarchicalDataTemplate ItemsSource='{Binding Path=Elements}' x:Key='TVTemplate'>             <TreeViewItem Header='{Binding Path=Name}'/>         </HierarchicalDataTemplate>     </Window.Resources>     <StackPanel>         <TreeView x:Name='_treeView' Style='{StaticResource TVallExpanded}'                 ItemsSource='{Binding Path=Root.Elements}'                 ItemTemplate='{StaticResource TVTemplate}' />     </StackPanel> </Window> 

XAML’s codebehind that loads XML to XDocument and binds it to TreeView

public partial class TreeViewer : Window {     public TreeViewer()     {         InitializeComponent();         XDocument doc = XDocument.Parse(File.ReadAllText(@'C:\MyWizard.xml'));         _treeView.DataContext = doc;     } } 

So in the XAML markup we are binding Name to TreeViewItem’s header.

<TreeViewItem Header='{Binding Path=Name}'/> 

However, I want to bind it to Title attribute of Section, Loop and Page in the Xml above. I read that it’s not possible to use XPath while binding XDocument. But there has to be a way to bind the Title attribute to TreeViewItem’s Header text. I tried using @Title, .[@Title] etc. But none seemed to work.

This thread on MSDN Forums has a similar discussion.

Any pointers would be greatly helpful.

Answer 1

Hurrah !!! I figured out how to bind XAttribute. It is not intuitive and it’s not easily imaginable. But here is how it can be done.

<TreeViewItem Header='{Binding Path=Attribute[Title].Value}'/> 

It is hard to imagine that Title can directly be used in square braces.

More @ this MSDN link