Develop Reference

Difference between Command (ICommand) and Click event

When should I use the Command and when to use the Click event?
F.e. if I have a Button in my UWP app what should I use?

When should I use the Command and when to use the Click event?
Yours is a broad question and I would simply answer with: "It depends".
Because:
The Command implements the ICommand interface and this means more code to add to your application but usually this won't change. Instead, the event handler doesn't require any interface implementation.
For every command you want, you have to provide the code that will handle the click and the CanExecute logic, to say when the command can execute. This is not requested in a simple event handler (like MyButton_Click). This means that, using a Command, you will have more control over the elements of your UI (the button won't execute anything if CanExecute is false).
When you want to add a Command, you will bind it to your DataContext (the ViewModel, if you implement the MVVM pattern). Instead, when you add a simple event handler (like MyButton_Click), the code will be placed in your code-behind that is the logic behind your main window. This means that implementing a Command, according to me, you'll have everything you need to modify in just one place (the ViewModel) instead of logic scattered everywhere in your project.
Of course, you can use whatever you want and my points are there just to give you an insight about these different implementations and you have to consider which solution is suitable for you, considering also the requirements you have been given (like: "Don't use event handlers" or "The Command is too advanced, let's just use something simple", etc.) and/or other constraints in your project.

Calling Usercontrol method from another form

I have this Usercontrol with a Listview loaded in the Mainwindow:
<Controls:MetroAnimatedSingleRowTabControl Grid.Row="1" x:Name="MainTabControl" Controls:TabControlHelper.IsUnderlined="True" Margin="10,0,0,1">
<TabItem Controls:ControlsHelper.HeaderFontSize="40" Header=" List" Foreground="#CCB5BABB" Controls:ControlsHelper.HeaderFontStretch="UltraExpanded" HorizontalAlignment="Left" VerticalAlignment="Top" >
<load:Usercontrol1 DataContext="{Binding}" />
</TabItem>
From this Usercontrol a ButtonClick calls another form for entering new data. After saving the data to database, I call a method loading the list in Usercontrol by referencing the entire Usercontrol to the entry window :
private readonly Usercontrol1 temp;
public newDataEntry(Usercontrol1 temp2)
{
InitializeComponent();
temp= temp2;
}
private void buttonentry(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
temp.fillList(); // list in Usercontrol fill
this.Close();
}
Since I want to use the same entry form with different Usercontrols, is there a more effective way to call method in Usercontrol?

Without a good Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example that shows clearly what you are doing, why you want to call this method, what the method does, and what specific problem you are having generalizing the action, it is impossible to know for sure what the best answer for your scenario is. That said, some discussion can be provided.
First and foremost, it is a mistake for your newDataEntry class to depend on the Usercontrol1 class at all. This should already be apparent, due to the issue you are running into trying to reuse it with other UserControl classes, but it is also a basic OOP concept: a class that exists to support some other class should not itself carry a dependency on that other class. Doing so breaks reusability in a way that is fundamentally opposite a primary goal of OOP.
So how do you get rid of this dependency? Well, the most general way in C# would be for your Usercontrol1 to subscribe to the newDataEntry object's Closed event. Then it can do whatever it wants at that time, including calling its own fillList() event.
Of course, if the newDataEnty window is used modally (i.e. you call ShowDialog()), then subscribing to the Closed event is overkill. You can just call whatever code you need to when the ShowDialog() method returns.
All that said, the name fillList() hints that you're copying list data directly into some list-based control (e.g. the ListView you mentioned). When in fact, in a WPF program, you should be manipulating only view models and letting the UI respond accordingly. Again, without a good MCVE showing context, it's impossible to say for sure that's what you're doing, never mind provide any specific advice along those lines. Suffice to say, it's likely that this code doesn't belong in the Usercontrol1 class at all.
See also these related posts:
How to call method of the main WPF window from the modal window? - this seems most applicable. Unfortunately, the accepted and top-voted answer is one of the worst (introduces exactly the kind of class coupling you're trying to avoid here), but there are other answers with some useful information.
WPF MVVM call ViewModel Save method on Window Close - this discusses doing something similar in the context of using a proper view model. May or may not be directly applicable to your scenario.
Communicate between two windows forms in C# - this is about Winforms, but in this particular scenario the basic techniques are similar. In this particular case, you wouldn't need to declare a new event, because the Closed event already seems to do what you want.

Why ButtonBase doesn't check its Visibility before testing `ICommand.CanExecute`?

I've faced with an issue, that blows up my mind.
Let's look at these methods from ButtonBase:
private void HookCommand(ICommand command)
{
CanExecuteChangedEventManager.AddHandler(command, OnCanExecuteChanged);
UpdateCanExecute();
}
private void OnCanExecuteChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
UpdateCanExecute();
}
private void UpdateCanExecute()
{
if (Command != null)
{
CanExecute = MS.Internal.Commands.CommandHelpers.CanExecuteCommandSource(this);
}
else
{
CanExecute = true;
}
}
HookCommand is called, when you're assigning new command to the button. It subscribes to CommandManager.RequerySuggested via weak event manager and updates button state (enabled/disabled).
OnCanExecuteChanged is just an event handler, and UpdateCanExecute ultimately calls your ICommand.CanExecute, when you use something different from RoutedCommand. This is the case, when you're working with any MVVM framework.
Now, the problem.
One of my data templates is applied to the ContentControl to show some data:
<ContentControl Grid.Row="0" Content="{Binding}" ContentTemplate="{StaticResource TemplateState}"/>
This template is contained within rather complex visual tree inside another ContentControl, which is hosted in ElementHost (this is a WPF component in WinForms MDI-application).
There are a couple of buttons inside this template, whose Command properties are bound to RelayCommands.
When I close MDI child, which contains visuals, rendered using this data template, buttons try to update their state and call OnCanExecuteChanged. This is a big problem, because CanExecute calls some disposable object, that already had been disposed.
I know, that:
1) the window (WinForms form) is closed at this moment, because CanExecute is called after the Form.Closed event is handled;
2) there's no memory leaks - if I mock CanExecute, memory profiler shows, that my view model, which contains commands, is collected by GC and no longer exists.
The question.
What's the purpose to check CanExecute, if the button isn't visible?
Is there any option to prevent this behavior?
P.S.
The only workaround I see is to keep somewhere in my view models a flag,, which will show, that disposable was disposed, and return false from CanExecute.
Any better ideas?

I would give four potential answers, and one guess towards why it is implemented the way it is:
Set the DataContext of the window which is getting torn down to null before you dispose everything. The button would have no reference on the object, so the exception never gets thrown.
Wrap the call to the disposable object in a try/catch which filters ObjectDisposedException and returns false.
Add a IsDisposed property to the disposable object, and check beforehand. It does seem like there could be a race condition here if you are doing anything on a non-UI or finalizer thread.
Hold a WeakReference to the disposable object if you are waiting for the finalizer to call Dispose, or set the reference to null after you call Dispose() and check if it is null prior to calling upon it.
As far as why command gets queried even when non-visible, consider that the result of the command may control the visibility. Imagine the following:
<!-- This would probably have to be done in some more complicated way, like
passing IsEnabled to a converter with CanExecute as the parameter, or
by just binding to IsEnabled. -->
<Button Visibility="{Binding RelativeSource={x:Static RelativeSource.Self}, Path=CanExecute}"
Command="{Binding TheCommand" Content="Do it" />
If it did not query the state of the button is hidden, it would never be shown once disabled.

Event Handler located in different class than MainWindow

So I followed the guide on the following site to restrict the characters a textbox can accept.
http://www.rhyous.com/2010/06/18/how-to-limit-or-prevent-characters-in-a-textbox-in-csharp/
My problem is I can't figure out how to make the event handler trigger in the secondary class. Basically how do I tell VS to look for the event handler code in that class instead of MainWindow? I tried searching, but apparently don't know the correct terms to use. The xaml reference I used was
xmlns:DigitBox="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Controls;assembly=PresentationFramework"
Any ideas?

Simplest way I've found to do it is assign the event in your constructor.
public MainWindow()
{
InitializeComponent();
TextBoxCurrency.GotFocus += expandedTextBoxEvents.TextBoxCurrencyGotFocus;
TextBoxCurrency.LostFocus += expandedTextBoxEvents.TextBoxCurrencyLostFocus;
}
I've searched a way to do it in XAML and I did not found an easy and clean way to do it.

You are much better off using commands and command bindings. I'm not sure what the specific command that would would bind to for a text box for your desired functionality, but one of the goals for WPF was to lessen the use of Event Handlers in code behind.
Check out this article for an overview of commands and this article for a way to hook up commands with events. WPF commanding is one of the coolest features to enable true separation of concerns between UI and business logic.
As a worst case scenario solution, you could create your own text box that inherits from the text box control and hook up the events in that class. Your control would then be reusable.

How not to lose binding source updates?

Suppose I have a modal dialog with a textbox and OK/Cancel buttons. And it is built on MVVM - i.e. it has a ViewModel object with a string property that the textbox is bound to.
Say, I enter some text in the textbox and then grab my mouse and click "OK". Everything works fine: at the moment of click, the textbox loses focus, which causes the binding engine to update the ViewModel's property. I get my data, everybody's happy.
Now suppose I don't use my mouse. Instead, I just hit Enter on the keyboard. This also causes the "OK" button to "click", since it is marked as IsDefault="True". But guess what? The textbox doesn not lose focus in this case, and therefore, the binding engine remains innocently ignorant, and I don't get my data. Dang!
Another variation of the same scenario: suppose I have a data entry form right in the main window, enter some data into it, and then hit Ctrl+S for "Save". Guess what? My latest entry doesn't get saved!
This may be somewhat remedied by using UpdateSourceTrigger=PropertyChanged, but that is not always possible.
One obvious case would be the use of StringFormat with binding - the text keeps jumping back into "formatted" state as I'm trying to enter it.
And another case, which I have encountered myself, is when I have some time-consuming processing in the viewmodel's property setter, and I only want to perform it when the user is "done" entering text.
This seems like an eternal problem: I remember trying to solve it systematically from ages ago, ever since I've started working with interactive interfaces, but I've never quite succeeded. In the past, I always ended up using some sort of hacks - like, say, adding an "EnsureDataSaved" method to every "presenter" (as in "MVP") and calling it at "critical" points, or something like that...
But with all the cool technologies, as well as empty hype, of WPF, I expected they'd come up with some good solution.

At critical points, you can force the binding to push through to your view model:
var textBox = Keyboard.FocusedElement as TextBox;
BindingOperations.GetBindingExpression(textBox, TextBox.TextProperty).UpdateSource();
Edit:
OK, since you don't want hacks we have to face the ugly truth:
In order to implement a clean view, the properties exposed by your view model should be friendly to frequent binding updates.
An analogy we can use is a text editor. If the application was a giant text box bound to a file on disk, every keystroke would result in writing the whole file. Even the concept of saving is not needed. That's perversely correct but terribly inefficient. We all immediately see that the view model needs to expose a buffer for the view to bind to and this re-introduces the concept of save and forces state handling in our view model.
Yet, we see this is still not efficient enough. For even medium-sized files the overhead of updating the whole-file buffer on every keystroke becomes unbearable. Next we expose commands in our view model to efficiently manipulate the buffer, never actually exchanging the whole buffer with the view.
So we conclude that in order to achieve efficiency and responsiveness with pure MVVM, we need to expose an efficient view model. That means that all text boxes can be bound through to properties with no ill effects. But, it also means that you have to push state down into the view model to handle that. And that's OK because a view model is not the model; it's job is it to handle the needs of the view.
It's true that we can rapidly prototype user interfaces by taking advantage of shortcuts like binding on focus changes. But binding on focus changes can have negative consequences in real applications and if so then we should simply not use it.
What is the alternative? Expose a property friendly to frequent updates. Call it the same thing as the old inefficient property was called. Implement your fast property using the slow property with logic that depends on the state of the view model. The view model gets the save command. It knows whether the fast property has been pushed through to the slow property. It can decide if when and where the slow property will be synched to the model.
But you say, haven't we just moved the hack from the view to the view model? No, we have lost some elegance and simplicity, but go back to the text editor analogy. We have to solve the problem, and it is the view model's job to solve it.
If we want to use pure MVVM and we want efficiency and responsiveness, then lame heuristics like let's avoid updating the binding source until the element loses focus won't help. They introduce as many problems as they solve. In that case, we should let the view model do its job, even if means adding complexity.
Assuming we accept it, how can we manage the complexity? We can implement a generic wrapper utility class to buffer the slow property and allow the view model to hook its get and set methods. Our utility class can auto-register for save command events to reduce the amount of boilerplate code in our view model.
If we do it right, then all the parts of the view model that were fast enough to be used with property changed binding will all still be the same, and the others that were worthy of asking the question "Is this property too slow?" will have a small amount of code to address the issue, and the view is none the wiser.

This is a tricky one and I agree a non-hack and more-or-less code free solution should be found. Here are my thoughts:
The view is responsible because it sets IsDefault to true and allows for this 'problem'
The ViewModel should not be responsible in any way to fix this it might introduce dependencies from VM to V and thus breaking the pattern.
Without adding (C#) code to the View all you can do is either change bindings (e.g. to UpdateSourceTrigger=PropertyChanged) or add code to a base class of the Button. In the base class of the button you might be able to shift focus to the button before executing the command. Still hack-ish but cleaner than adding code to the VM.
So at the moment the only 'nice' solutions I see require the view developers to stick to a rule; set the binding in a specific way or use a special button.

I would add a Click event handler for the default button. The button's event handler is executed prior the command will be called, so the data bindings can be updated by changing the focus in the event handler.
private void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) {
((Control)sender).Focus();
}
However, I don't know if similar approach can be used with other shorcut keys.

Yes, I have quite some experience. WPF and Silverlight still have their pain areas. MVVM doesn't solve it all; it is not a magic bullet and the support in the frameworks is getting better but still lacks. E.g., I still find editing deep child collections a problem.
At the moment I handle these situations case by case because a lot depends on the way the individual view have to work. This is what I spend most of my time on because I generate a lot of plumbing using T4 so I have time left for these quirks.

The problem is that the TextBox's text has a default source trigger of LostFocus instead of PropertyChanged. IMHO this was a wrong default choice since it is quite unexpected and can cause all sorts of problems (such as the ones you describe).
The simplest solution would be to always explicitly use UpdateSourceTrigger=PropertyChanged (as the others suggested).
If this isn't feasible (for whatever reason), I would handle the Unloaded, Closing or Closed events and manually update the binding (as shown by Rick).
Unfortunately it seems that certain scenarios are still a bit problematic with a TextBox, so some workarounds are necessary. For example, see my question. You might want to open a Connect bug (or two) with your specific problems.
EDIT:
Pressing Ctrl+S with focus on the TextBox, I would say the behavior is correct. After all, you are executing a command. This has nothing to do with the current (keyboard) focus. The command may even depend on the focused element! You are not clicking on a button or similar, which would cause the focus to change (however, depending on the button, it may fire the same command as before).
So if you want to only update the bound Text when you lose focus from the TextBox, but at the same time you want to fire a command with the newest contents of TextBox (i.e. the changes without it having lost focus), this does not match up. So either you have to change your binding to PropertyChanged, or manually update the binding.
EDIT #2:
As for your two cases why you cannot always use PropertyChanged:
What precisely are you doing with StringFormat? In all my UI work so far I use StringFormat to reformat data I am getting from the ViewModel. However, I am not sure how using StringFormat with data which is then again edited by the user should work. I am guessing you want to format the text for display, and then "unformat" the text the user enters for further processing in your ViewModel. From your description, it seems it isn't "unformatted" correctly all the time.
Open a Connect bug where it isn't working as it should.
Write your own ValueConverter which you use in the binding.
Have a separate property with the last "valid" value and use that value in your ViewModel; only update it once you get another "valid" value from the property you use in databinding.
If you have a long-running property setter (ex. a "validate" step), I would do the long-running part in a separate method (getters and setters should normally be relatively "fast"). Then run that method in a worker thread/threadpool/BackgroundWorker (make it abortable so you can restart it with a new value once the user enters more data) or similar.

What you think about proxy command and KeyBinding to ENTER key?
EDITED:
There we have one utility command (like converter), which requires knowledge about concrete view. This command can be reused for any dialog with same bug. And you add this functionality/hack only in view where this bug exists, and VM will be clear.
VM creates to adapt business to view and must provide some specific functionality like data conversion, UI commands, additional/helper fields, notifications and hacks/workarounds. And if we have leaks between levels in MVVM we have problems with: high connectivity, code reuse, unit testing for VM, pain code.
Usage in xaml (no IsDefault on Button):
<Window.Resources>
<model:ButtonProxyCommand x:Key="proxyCommand"/>
</Window.Resources>
<Window.InputBindings>
<KeyBinding Key="Enter"
Command="{Binding Source={StaticResource proxyCommand}, Path=Instance}"
CommandParameter="{Binding ElementName=_okBtn}"/>
</Window.InputBindings>
<StackPanel>
<TextBox>
<TextBox.Text>
<Binding Path="Text"></Binding>
</TextBox.Text>
</TextBox>
<Button Name="_okBtn" Command="{Binding Command}">Ok</Button>
</StackPanel>
There used special proxy command, which receive element (CommandParameter) to move focus and execute. But this class requires ButtonBase for CommandParameter:
public class ButtonProxyCommand : ICommand
{
public bool CanExecute(object parameter)
{
var btn = parameter as ButtonBase;
if (btn == null || btn.Command == null)
return false;
return btn.Command.CanExecute(btn.CommandParameter);
}
public event EventHandler CanExecuteChanged;
public void Execute(object parameter)
{
if (parameter == null)
return;
var btn = parameter as ButtonBase;
if (btn == null || btn.Command == null)
return;
Action a = () => btn.Focus();
var op = Dispatcher.CurrentDispatcher.BeginInvoke(a);
op.Wait();
btn.Command.Execute(btn.CommandParameter);
}
private static ButtonProxyCommand _instance = null;
public static ButtonProxyCommand Instance
{
get
{
if (_instance == null)
_instance = new ButtonProxyCommand();
return _instance;
}
}
}
This is just idea, not complete solution.