Question

I want to create a Silverlight 2 control that has two content areas. A Title and a MainContent. So the control would be:

<StackPanel> <TextBlock Text=' CONTENT1 '/> <Content with CONTENT2 '/> </StackPanel> 

When I use the control I should just be able to use:

<MyControl Text='somecontent'>main content </MyControl> 

How can I create such a control?

Answer 1

You can do that easily with the ContentProperty attribute.

Then you can define your code behind as:

[ContentProperty('Child')] public partial class MyControl: UserControl {     public static readonly DependencyProperty ChildProperty = DependencyProperty.Register('Child', typeof(UIElement), typeof(MyControl), null);      public UIElement Child     {         get { return (UIElement)this.GetValue(ChildProperty); }         set         {             this.SetValue(ChildProperty, value);             this.content.Content = value;         }     } 

What that will do is any default content within your tags (<MyControl Text='somecontent'>main content </MyControl>) – will be set as the Child property on your class. Then once it’s been set you can assign it to any control you like.

Edit:

You can have as many contents as you like, but you can only have 1 auto-content (which is designated via the ContentProperty attribute). If you want two you could do:

<MyControl>   <MyControl.Content1>Hello World</MyControl.Content1>   <MyControl.Content2>Goodbye World</MyControl.Content2> </MyControl> 

All you have to do is make sure you have the matching dependency properties in your code. Then when the property is set, just assign it to a parent content control in your XAML.