Home/ Questions/Q 4039800
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-20T12:39:54+00:00

I’m trying to build my first WP7 app and I’m a bit confused about

  • 0

I’m trying to build my first WP7 app and I’m a bit confused about how to do organize data. My data is on an XML file and I have three kinds of data to represent on the device: sales by country, by year, and by city.
I’ve seen some examples and I think to build 3 classes like CountryViewModel, YearViewModel, and CityViewModel on which I have the single fields exposed as property.

Then I think to add a MainViewModel to handle the rest, but in the examples I’ve seen in MainViewModel there is a reference to a single itemViewModel, then should I create MainCountryViewModel, MainYearViewModel, and MainCityViewModel?

Can anyone point me to the right approach?

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    This looks like an interesting question. Here’s what I think is right:

    • ViewModels should be structured around the Views – they should hold the data in a format that is “friendly” and “convenient” for the views to use.

    • Behind these ViewModels, you can structure the persistent Models in a format that is convenient for loading and saving – or for sending over the wire.

    • The reason the samples mostly have a MainViewModel with a list of ItemViewModel’s is because most of the samples just show a main window with a ListBox of items

    • If you look at CodePlex, then you should be able to find quite a few samples with more complicated ViewModel structures – e.g. http://4square.codeplex.com, http://mahtweetswp7.codeplex.com, http://gasmileage.codeplex.com, …

    So… for your app: I think if it fits with your UI, then you should definitely create a MainViewModel and let it have the three properties of observable lists of Country, Year and City-ViewModels.

    • 0