Question

I’ve started to learn about GridView (XAML) for Windows 8 Store apps. I’ve used the ItemsPage example to try and have a look at the code.

My aim is use it as a horizontal menu, on the click event it will simply open another xaml page.

I’ve edited the SampleDataSource.cs file and filled up with the wanted content, i thought that there would be an easier, cleaner way of doing this. This Menu won’t be dynamic and won’t change so i’m looking for a way to statically add the menu items.

I can do the following to add a simple text entry;

<x:String>Item 1</x:String>

But i have i’m not sure how to bind to certain parts, such as the image and title elements

Right, i think i’m understanding this a little bit more. The following code would try and bind to itemsViewSource

<CollectionViewSource
        x:Name="itemsViewSource"
        Source="{Binding Items}"
        d:Source="{Binding AllGroups, Source={d:DesignInstance Type=data:SampleDataSource, IsDesignTimeCreatable=True}}"/>

So would i need to create a new list, such as;

List<String> itemsList = new List<string>();
itemsList.Add("Item 1");
itemsList.Add("Item 2");

Only issue is that each item (line) would need a Title and Image text field and how to bind those to the correct items.

Answer 1

If your ItemsControl (GridView) needs to display more than one bound item for each list item – you need to bind its Source to a list of something more than a string unless you want to parse the strings. In your case you would have something like

List<TitleAndImageText> itemsList = new List<TitleAndImageText>();
itemsList.Add(new TitleAndImageText { Title = "Title 1", ImageText = "Image Text 1");
itemsList.Add(new TitleAndImageText { Title = "Title 2", ImageText = "Image Text 2");

Then in your ItemTemplate/DataTemplate you would have two TextBlocks – that bind to the properties of your item view model like this: Text="{Binding Title}", Text="{Binding ImageText}".

Of course you need to define your TitleAndImageText, e.g.

public class TitleAndImageText
{
    public string Title { get; set; }
    public string ImageText { get; set; }
}