Url: http://wilderminds.blob.core.windows.net/downloads/sldp.zip
I’ve been teaching Silverlight for a couple of years now and when I get to the story of Dependency Properties, there is usually a collective groan when I refactor a simple property into a Dependency Property. Building them is easy but there is too much code. If this were back in the C++ days, I would have just build a macro that was impossible to debug into…but those days are gone. Instead I wrote a simple snippet.
You might be wondering, “But there is already a Dependency Property snippet!”. Yes there is: “propdp” in C# and “wpfdp” in Visual Basic. But they are both for WPF not for Silverlight. In addition, I didn’t like that a changed event handler wasn’t generated as its often needed. To that end I wrote a new snippet.
To install the snippet, download the sldp.zip file and open the sldp.snippet file. In Visual Studio, use the Tools->Code Snippets Manager:
I only wrote a C# version (anyone who wants to modify it for VB, feel free and drop me a copy and i’ll link it here). So In the dialog that is opened, pick Visual C# and click the Import button:
Next navigate to and pick the sldp.snippet file that you expanded from the zip file. This will leave you in the final part of the Import Code Snippet dialog:
Close the two dialogs and you can simply type **sldp **and tab twice to create your new snippet. An example of the code generated is shown below:
public string TheName
{
get { return (string)GetValue(TheNameProperty); }
set { SetValue(TheNameProperty, value); }
}
// Using a DependencyProperty as the backing store for TheName.
// This enables animation, styling, binding, etc...
public static readonly DependencyProperty TheNameProperty =
DependencyProperty.Register("TheName",
typeof(string),
typeof(HelloView),
new PropertyMetadata("",
new PropertyChangedCallback(
OnTheNameChanged)));
static void OnTheNameChanged(object sender,
DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs args)
{
// Get reference to self
HelloView source = (HelloView)sender;
// Add Handling Code
string newValue = (string)args.newValue;
}
Enjoy and if you have questions or improvements, let me know.
UPDATE:
After building this, I found these handy Silverlight Snippets (including two snippets to replace my one DependencyProperty snippet):
http://blog.nerdplusart.com/archives/silverlight-code-snippets
They will also be included in Page Brooks’ Silverlight Contrib project:
