Binding Sources Overview

In data binding, the binding source (source) object refers to the object you obtain data from. This topic discusses the types of objects you can use as the source.

This topic contains the following sections.

• Source of a Binding
• Using a CLR Class as the Binding Source Object
• Entire Objects Used as a Binding Source
• Collection Objects Used as a Binding Source
• Related Topics

Source of a Binding

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) data binding supports the following types of binding source:

Using a CLR Class as the Binding Source Object

This section discusses the things you need to know if you are implementing a CLR class to serve as a source object.

Providing Change Notifications

If you are using either OneWay or TwoWay binding (you want your UI to update when the source properties change dynamically), you must implement a suitable property changed notification mechanism. The recommended mechanism is for the CLR class to implement the INotifyPropertyChanged interface. For more details, see How to: Implement Property Change Notification.

If you do not implement INotifyPropertyChanged, then you must arrange for your own notification system to make sure that the data used in a binding stays current. You can provide change notifications by supporting the PropertyChanged pattern for each property that you want change notifications for. To support this pattern, you define a PropertyNameChanged event for each property, where PropertyName is the name of the property. You raise the event every time the property changes.

If your source object implements a proper notification mechanism target updates happen automatically. If for any reason your source object does not provide the proper property changed notifications, you have the option to use the UpdateTarget method to update the target property explicitly.

Other Characteristics

The following list provides other important points to note:

• If you want to create the object in XAML, the class must have a default constructor. In some .NET languages, such as C#, the default constructor might be created for you.

• The properties you use as source properties for a binding must be public properties of your class. Explicitly defined interface properties cannot be accessed for binding purposes, nor can protected, private, or virtual properties that have no base implementation.

• You cannot bind to public fields of a CLR class.

• The type of the property declared in your class is the type that is passed to the binding. However, the type ultimately used by the binding depends on the type of the binding target property, not of the source property. If there is a difference in type, you might want to write a converter to handle how your custom property is initially passed to the binding. For more information, see IValueConverter.

Entire Objects Used as a Binding Source

You can use an entire object as the source for a binding. This can be done by specifying the object as the binding source using the Source or the DataContext property, and then providing no path beyond a blank binding declaration: {Binding}. Scenarios in which this is useful include binding to objects that are of type string, binding to objects with multiple properties you are interested in, or binding to collection objects. For an example of binding to an entire collection object, see How to: Use the Master-Detail Pattern with Hierarchical Data.

Note that you may need to apply custom logic so that the data is meaningful to your bound target property. The custom logic may be in the form of a custom converter (if default type conversion does not exist) or a DataTemplate. For more information about converters, see the Data Conversion section of the Data Binding Overview. For more information about data templates, see Data Templating Overview.

Collection Objects Used as a Binding Source

Often, the object you want to use as the source is a collection of multiple custom objects, each of which represents a data object that serves as the source for one instance of a repeated binding. For instance, you might have a CustomerOrders collection consisting of CustomerOrder objects, where your application iterates over the collection to determine how many orders exist and the data contained in each.

You can enumerate over any collection that implements the IEnumerable interface. However, to set up dynamic bindings so that insertions or deletions in the collection update the UI automatically, the collection must implement the INotifyCollectionChanged interface. This interface exposes an event that must be raised whenever the underlying collection changes.

WPF provides the ObservableCollection class, which is a built-in implementation of a data collection that exposes the INotifyCollectionChanged interface. The individual data objects within the collection must satisfy the requirements described in the preceding sections. For an example, see How to: Create and Bind to an ObservableCollection. Before implementing your own collection, consider using ObservableCollection or one of the existing collection classes, such as List, Collection, and BindingList, among many others.

If you have an advanced scenario and want to implement your own collection, consider using IList, which provides a non-generic collection of objects that can be individually accessed by index and thus the best performance.

See Also

Tasks

How to: Specify the Binding Source

Reference

ObjectDataProvider
XmlDataProvider

Concepts

Data Binding Overview

Other Resources

Data Binding How-to Topics