Question

To do DataBinding of the Document in a WPF RichtextBox, I saw 2 solutions so far, which are to derive from the RichtextBox and add a DependencyProperty, and also the solution with a “proxy”.

Neither the first or the second are satisfactory. Does somebody know another solution, or instead, a commercial RTF control which is capable of DataBinding? The normal TextBox is not an alternative, since we need text formatting.

Any idea?

Answer 1

There is a much easier way!

You can easily create an attached DocumentXaml (or DocumentRTF) property which will allow you to bind the RichTextBox‘s document. It is used like this, where Autobiography is a string property in your data model:

<TextBox Text="{Binding FirstName}" />
<TextBox Text="{Binding LastName}" />
<RichTextBox local:RichTextBoxHelper.DocumentXaml="{Binding Autobiography}" />

Voila! Fully bindable RichTextBox data!

The implementation of this property is quite simple: When the property is set, load the XAML (or RTF) into a new FlowDocument. When the FlowDocument changes, update the property value.

This code should do the trick:

using System.IO;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Controls;
using System.Windows.Documents;
public class RichTextBoxHelper : DependencyObject
{
    public static string GetDocumentXaml(DependencyObject obj)
    {
        return (string)obj.GetValue(DocumentXamlProperty);
    }

    public static void SetDocumentXaml(DependencyObject obj, string value)
    {
        obj.SetValue(DocumentXamlProperty, value);
    }

    public static readonly DependencyProperty DocumentXamlProperty =
        DependencyProperty.RegisterAttached(
            "DocumentXaml",
            typeof(string),
            typeof(RichTextBoxHelper),
            new FrameworkPropertyMetadata
            {
                BindsTwoWayByDefault = true,
                PropertyChangedCallback = (obj, e) =>
                {
                    var richTextBox = (RichTextBox)obj;

                    // Parse the XAML to a document (or use XamlReader.Parse())
                    var xaml = GetDocumentXaml(richTextBox);
                    var doc = new FlowDocument();
                    var range = new TextRange(doc.ContentStart, doc.ContentEnd);

                    range.Load(new MemoryStream(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(xaml)),
                          DataFormats.Xaml);

                    // Set the document
                    richTextBox.Document = doc;

                    // When the document changes update the source
                    range.Changed += (obj2, e2) =>
                    {
                        if (richTextBox.Document == doc)
                        {
                            MemoryStream buffer = new MemoryStream();
                            range.Save(buffer, DataFormats.Xaml);
                            SetDocumentXaml(richTextBox,
                                Encoding.UTF8.GetString(buffer.ToArray()));
                        }
                    };
                }
            });
}

The same code could be used for TextFormats.RTF or TextFormats.XamlPackage. For XamlPackage you would have a property of type byte[] instead of string.

The XamlPackage format has several advantages over plain XAML, especially the ability to include resources such as images, and it is more flexible and easier to work with than RTF.

It is hard to believe this question sat for 15 months without anyone pointing out the easy way to do this.