Question

I’m trying to get my head round MVVM, and have a fairly simple requirement that i’m struggling with.

I’m using RIA services, and in my model, i’ve got 3 entities that represent views from a DB.

In my XAML view at the moment, I have a combobox which allows the user to select a particular view from the DB, and I have a datagrid that should display the results from the users selection. The problem I am having, is that the DomainContext.Load method (called when the user selects an item from the ComboBox) returns an EntitySet of a specific type (I.E EntitySet<Servers> or EntitySet<Apps>), depending on which view is selected.

I need to bind the grid to a property in my ViewModel, but can’t declare just one property to hold the EntitySet from the Load operation, as each Load operation returns a different type of EntitySet (<Apps>,<Servers> for instance).

Is there a generic type that I can bind my grid to, and also convert the EntitySets to?

Or, am I doing this completely wrong? All suggestions welcome as i’m floundering 🙂

Thanks

Mick

Answer 1

Use 2 different DataGrid controls (one for Apps and one for Servers) and hide/show when needed. Chances are you may want to customise them independently anyway.

Never overcomplicate things, e.g. by sharing controls, just because the GUI elements appear similar. Think of them as a ServerDataGrid control and AppDataGrid control.