Walkthrough: Binding WPF Controls to an Entity Data Model

Start Visual Studio.

On the File menu, point to New, and then click Project.

Expand Visual Basic or Visual C#, and then select Windows.

Select the WPF Application project template.

In the Name box, type AdventureWorksCustomerEditor and then click OK.

Visual Studio creates the AdventureWorksCustomerEditor project.

On the Data menu, click Add New Data Source to open the Data Source Configuration Wizard.

On the Choose a Data Source Type page, click Database, and then click Next.

On the Choose a Database Model page, click Entity Data Model, and then click Next.

On the Choose Model Contents page, click Generate from database, and then click Next.

On the Choose Your Data Connection page, do one of the following:

• If a data connection to the AdventureWorksLT sample database is available in the drop-down list, select it.

  -or-

• Click New Connection and create a connection to the AdventureWorksLT database.

Make sure that the Save entity connection settings in App.Config as option is selected, and then click Next.

On the Choose Your Database Objects page, expand Tables, and then select the Customer table.

Click Finish.

The Model1.edmx file opens in the designer.

Build the project.

In Solution Explorer, double-click MainWindow.xaml.

The window opens in the WPF Designer.

In the XAML view of the designer, add the following code between the <Grid> tags:

<Grid.RowDefinitions>
     <RowDefinition Height="75" />
     <RowDefinition Height="425" />
</Grid.RowDefinitions>
<Button HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="22,20,0,24" Name="backButton" Width="75">&lt;</Button>
<Button HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="116,20,0,24" Name="nextButton" Width="75">&gt;</Button>
<Button HorizontalAlignment="Right" Margin="0,21,46,24" Name="saveButton" Width="110">Save changes</Button>

Build the project.

On the Data menu, click Show Data Sources.

In the Data Sources window, click the drop-down menu for the Customers node and select Details.

Expand the Customers node.

For this example some fields will not be displayed so click the drop-down menu next to the following nodes and select None:

• NameStyle

• PasswordHash

• PasswordSalt

• rowGuid

• ModifiedDate

From the Data Sources window, drag the Customers node to the area under the buttons.

In the designer, click the text box next to the Customer ID label.

In the Properties window, select the check box next to the IsReadOnly property.

Build the project.

In the designer, double-click the < button.

Visual Studio opens the code-behind file and creates a new backButton_Click event handler for the Click event.

Modify the Window_Loaded event handler so the CustomersViewSource and AdventureWorksLTEntities are outside of the method and accessible to the entire form. Only declare these global to the form, assign them within the Window_Loaded event handler similar to the following:

private System.Windows.Data.CollectionViewSource customersViewSource;
private AdventureWorksCustomerEditor.AdventureWorksLTEntities adventureWorksLTEntities;

private void Window_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
    adventureWorksLTEntities = new AdventureWorksCustomerEditor.AdventureWorksLTEntities();
    // Load data into Customers. You can modify this code as needed.
    customersViewSource = ((System.Windows.Data.CollectionViewSource)(this.FindResource("customersViewSource")));
    System.Data.Objects.ObjectQuery<AdventureWorksCustomerEditor.Customer> customersQuery = this.GetCustomersQuery(adventureWorksLTEntities);
    customersViewSource.Source = customersQuery.Execute(System.Data.Objects.MergeOption.AppendOnly);
}

Add the following code to the backButton_Click event handler:

if (customersViewSource.View.CurrentPosition > 0)
    customersViewSource.View.MoveCurrentToPrevious();

Return to the designer, and double-click the > button.

Visual Studio opens the code-behind file and creates a new nextButton_Click event handler for the Click event.

Add the following code to the nextButton _Click event handler:

if (customersViewSource.View.CurrentPosition < ((CollectionView)customersViewSource.View).Count - 1)
    customersViewSource.View.MoveCurrentToNext();

In the designer, double-click the Save changes button.

Visual Studio opens the code-behind file and creates a new saveButton_Click event handler.

Add the following code to the saveButton_Click event handler:

adventureWorksLTEntities.SaveChanges();

Press F5.

Edit one of the customer records and then click Save changes.

Close the application, and then start the application again by pressing F5.

Navigate to the customer record you changed, and verify that the change has persisted.

Close the application.