Question

I’ve been busy working on a program that can solve Minesweeper puzzles (for no other reason than I think it’s fun). When it comes down to the UI, though, I greatly dislike the idea of instantiating over a hundred of the same control, one per cell. Should I create a custom control that handles all of its drawing and input itself? What approach do you guys suggest?

I’m using WPF, and I’m pretty new. Any pointers would be awesome.

Answer 1

Yes a custom control would be a good idea. Also, M-V-VM is a must in a situation like this; it will reduce the complexity of your app greatly.

I’d take a UniformGrid and use Buttons as the squares. You’d have to create a tri-state custom button if you want to add in the “?” intermediate state.

The model for the button would look like

public class MineSquare : INotifyPropertyChanged
{
  // exploded, number, or nothing
  pubic ImageSource ButtonImage {get;private set;}
  // true, then goes to false when clicked
  public bool CanClick {get; private set;}
  // bound to the Command of the button
  public ICommand Click {get; private set;}
}

You deal with the model in code rather than the controls. Drop in nine MineSquares into an ObservableCollection on your ViewModel bound to your UniformGrid and you have a 3×3 minesweeper game. Each button handles its own logic. You can hook into the models via the view model to iterate over all squares and determine if everybody has been clicked.