Question

I’m a former PHP developer now doing WPF/C# applications, and am having trouble understanding the best way to access global variables and how UserControls access the main Window, etc.

In the constructor of my Window1 class I load UserControls into an internal Dictionary, then dynamically load these into a DockPanel at runtime, which works great and keeps the internal state of each one.

public Window1() {     InitializeComponent();      List<string> userControlKeys = new List<string>();     userControlKeys.Add('Welcome');     userControlKeys.Add('News');     Type type = this.GetType();     Assembly assembly = type.Assembly;     foreach (string userControlKey in userControlKeys)     {         string userControlFullName = String.Format('{0}.Pages.{1}', type.Namespace, userControlKey);         UserControl userControl = (UserControl)assembly.CreateInstance(userControlFullName);         _userControls.Add(userControlKey, userControl);     }      //set the default page     btnWelcome.RaiseEvent(new RoutedEventArgs(Button.ClickEvent)); } 

Question: from within a UserControl how do I access my Dictionary in Window1?

• I can access the static Class Window1 but not its instantiation hence making a Getter for it gets me no further.
• there are global attributes in C# but I can imagine there is a better, more OOP way
• it just seems like I am looking at this in terms of web site / session variables, and thus missing a key concept of desktop development where ‘state is everywhere’

Hope someone can shed some light on this.

Answer 1

Try using a singleton object. The idea is to exploit the mechanics of static objects to achieve ‘global’ variables but which are contained in a object for sanity management.