Binding to a view in c#

[Andrew]

I am using your menu control to let users navigate, and I am using your tab control to show the views that they select.  I do not want to close any tabs (views) automatically when they move between views, and I want to allow multiple instances of the same view, for example a product search, or a shopping cart.

so this is what I have roughed out: first the xaml

<telerik:RadMenu x:Name="MainMenu" ClickToOpen="False" ItemClick="MainMenu_ItemClick" VerticalAlignment="Top" HorizontalAlignment="Center"
           Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="1" >
     <telerik:RadMenuItem Header="Manufacturers" >
         <telerik:RadMenuItem Header="List" Name="Manufacturers" >
         </telerik:RadMenuItem>
         <telerik:RadMenuItem Header="Detail" Name="Manufacturer" />
      </telerik:RadMenuItem>
     <telerik:RadMenuItem Header="Customers">
             <telerik:RadMenuItem Header="List" Name="Customers" />
             <telerik:RadMenuItem Header="Detail" Name="Customer" />
     </telerik:RadMenuItem>
     <telerik:RadMenuItem Header="Distributors" Name="Distributors">

     </telerik:RadMenuItem>

 </telerik:RadMenu>

And to setup the tabcontrol

<telerik:RadTabControl FontSize="15" x:Name="tabControl" Margin="10" Grid.Row="1" Grid.Column="1"
                             >
    <telerik:RadTabItem Header="Home" />
</telerik:RadTabControl>

The first tab will hold the main landing page information (marketing stuff...)

private void MainMenu_ItemClick(object sender, Telerik.Windows.RadRoutedEventArgs e)
 {
     RadMenuItem item = e.OriginalSource as RadMenuItem;
     if (item != null)
     {
         RadTabItem itemToAdd = new RadTabItem()
         {
             Header = item.Name.ToString()

             // bind to view????

         };
         tabControl.Items.Add(itemToAdd);
         System.Windows.MessageBox.Show("You clicked '" + item.Header.ToString() + "'"+
             item.Name.ToString());

     }
 }

So the question is how do I bind the tab to my view.  The view name is in every case item.Name.ToString()+"View" so we could even create the name to bind to dynamically.

I assume I will need to initialize the view first.

I am doing all this using MVVM Light.

[Andrew]

I have the hard part figured out this will bind a view to a tab

if (item != null)
      {
          RadTabItem itemToAdd = new RadTabItem()
          {
            Header = item.Name.ToString(),
            Content= new CustomersView()

          };

          tabControl.Items.Add(itemToAdd);

But as you can see I am specifying the view explicitly which will require a giant case statement.  What I want to do is to bind the view that has the name item.Name.ToString()+"View" or even item.Name.ToString since I can name the views anyway I like.

Does anyone know how to do that?  I suspect there is a way to use binding.

By the way someone should add this syntax to the Telerik tabcontrol documentation. 

[Zarko]

Hello Andrew,

Unfortunately in this scenario you cannot use binding, because RadMenu have no SelectedItem property or something similar, so you should handle ItemClick event and place your logic there (the switch statement will work fine).

Sincerely yours,
Zarko
the Telerik team

[Andrew]

So now i have my view bound to a tab, and I can interact with controls on the bound view.  I added a button to test something, and although I click on it, it never executes its MouseLeftButtonDown method.  Is there any reason why this would happen.  In XAML

 

 

 

 

<Button Content="Close" Height="23" Name="CloseButton" Width="75"  MouseLeftButtonDown="CloseButton_MouseLeftButtonDown"   HorizontalAlignment="Center" />

In code

 

private void CloseButton_MouseLeftButtonDown(object sender, MouseButtonEventArgs e)
{
    MessageBox.Show("close requested");
    Messenger.Default.Send("CustomerTabClosed");
}

The messagebox never apprears.

[Andrew]

I am way too dense.  button events are Click not leftmousebuttondown - setup a new event handler, and presto, it works, and now my tabs magically close.