Content Model: This property may be used to add items to an ItemsControl. Adding a child to an ItemsControl object implicitly adds it to the ItemCollection for the ItemsControl object.

Note:
This property can only be set in Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) via the collection syntax shown, or by accessing the collection object and using its various methods such as Add. The property to access the collection object itself is read-only, and the collection itself is read-write.

Note that you use either the Items or the ItemsSource property to specify the collection that should be used to generate the content of your ItemsControl. When the ItemsSource property is set, the Items collection is made read-only and fixed-size.

When ItemsSource is in use, setting the ItemsSource property to nullNothingnullptra null reference (Nothing in Visual Basic) removes the collection and restores usage to Items, which will be an empty ItemCollection.

The Items property can contain items such as strings, objects, or other elements. The following example shows how to use the Items property to add content to a Menu control.

Menu myMenu = new Menu();

TextBlock myTextBlock = new TextBlock();
myTextBlock.Text = "My Text";
myMenu.Items.Add(myTextBlock);

Button myButton = new Button();
myButton.Content = "My Button";
myMenu.Items.Add(myButton);

Note that the ItemCollection is a view, so you can use the view-related functionalities such as sorting, filtering, and grouping.

For example, if you have an instance of a ListBox, myListBox, you can do the following to sort the content of the ListBox. In this example, Content is the name of the property to sort by.

myListBox.Items.SortDescriptions.Add(
    new SortDescription("Content", ListSortDirection.Descending));

Note that when you do this, if the control is bound to a collection directly, the default collection view is used, and the sort criteria are applied to all other controls bound to the same collection directly. The view will not be the default view if the ItemsSource property is bound to a CollectionViewSource.

If your ItemsControl is bound directly to a collection, then you can do the following to get the default view:

CollectionView myView;


...


myView = (CollectionView)CollectionViewSource.GetDefaultView(myItemsControl.ItemsSource);

Alternately, you can specify filtering, sorting, and grouping criteria in XAML or code by using a CollectionViewSource.

Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003

.NET Framework

Reference

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