Question

I use the following XAML file to create an XML resource and then bind this resource to a listbox:

<Window x:Class="WpfPractice.HierarchicalData"
        xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
        xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
        Title="HierarchicalData" Height="200" Width="650">
    <Window.Resources>
        <XmlDataProvider x:Key="XMLItems" XPath="/colors/color/@name">
            <x:XData>
                <colors >
                    <color name="pink"/>
                    <color name="white"/>
                    <color name="black"/>
                 </colors>
            </x:XData>
        </XmlDataProvider>
    </Window.Resources>
    <Grid>
          <ListBox ItemsSource="{Binding Source={StaticResource XMLItems}}"/>
    </Grid>
</Window>

VS designer displays the list of colours without any problems, but when I debug the WPF application the window is empty. In fact I have the same problem when I try to bind any XML items to WPF controls. Any suggestions why?

Thanks!

Answer 1

You should reset the default namesapce:

<colors xmlns="">

MSDN:

The root node of the XML data has an xmlns attribute that sets the XML namespace to an empty string. This is a requirement for applying XPath queries to a data island that is inline within the XAML page. In this inline case, the XAML, and thus the data island, inherits the System.Windows namespace. Because of this, you need to set the namespace blank to keep XPath queries from being qualified by the System.Windows namespace, which would misdirect the queries.