Develop Reference

Custom control binding is not updating

I'm having trouble getting my binding to work correctly. Basically I have this, call this Control1.xaml. The commented out portion of the code binds correctly and updates as expected.
<progControls:CalibrationSummary
</progControls:CalibrationSummary>
<!--<TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=NumberOfCalibrations, Mode=OneWay}"/>-->
However, if I put that commented code in a custom control called CalibrationsSummary.xaml, I cannot bind this to NumberOfCalibrations.
Here's what CalibrationsSummary looks like
<Grid>
<TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=NumberOfCalibrations, Mode=OneWay, RelativeSource={RelativeSource TemplatedParent}}"/>
</Grid>
Note that I do use RelativeSource to try to get the property associated with Control1.xaml, tried TemplateBinding also. What am I doing wrong?

CalibrationSummary has no TemplatedParent unless you have put it in a ControlTemplate.
If you don't explicitly set the DataContext of the property of CalibrationSummary somewhere, it will inherit the DataContext from its parent control (which I assume is Control1) and then you can bind any property of this control's DataContext as usual without specifying any source:
<Grid>
<TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=NumberOfCalibrations}"/>
</Grid>

Forcing a ListBox to re-render

Background:
I have a ListBox containing items defined by DataTemplates. Right now, if an object in the list has the property IsEditable set to true, the item's property information will be displayed inside of textboxes (via DataTemplate change), instead of textblocks (so the user can edit the content of that list item)
IsEditable is toggled on/off by a button inside of each list item. I have been told that we need to keep the state of all objects consistent, which means I can't just rebind the ItemsSource and lose everything.
Currently, I'm using this to re-render:
this.lbPoints.Dispatcher.Invoke(DispatcherPriority.Render, new Action(() => { }));
Question:
The aforementioned code snippet KIND OF does its job. By "kind of", I mean, it does eventually cause my data to become re-rendered, but only when I scroll to the bottom of the list and then scroll back up to the item i'm trying to re-render.
1) How can I re-render the data immediately without having to scroll around to get it to show up?

The guys commenting are right that you're going about this the wrong way... there is rarely a need to force a ListBox to re-render. You're probably causing yourself some additional grief trying to switch the DataTemplates (although it is possible). Instead of that, think about data binding the TextBox.IsReadOnly property to your IsEditable property:
<TextBox IsReadOnly="{Binding IsEditable}" Text="{Binding Text}" />
Another alternative is to use a BooleanToVisibilityConverter to show a different Grid in your DataTemplate when your IsEditable property is true. Unfortunately, that Converter doesn't have an inverse operation, so you could create an IsNotEditing property to bind to the Grid in the DataTemplate that is originally displayed. I'm not sure if that's clear... see this example:
<DataTemplate DataType="{x:Type YourPrefix:YourDataType}">
<Grid>
<Grid Visibility="{Binding IsNotEditing, Converter={StaticResource
BooleanToVisibilityConverter}}">
<!-- Define your uneditable UI here -->
</Grid>
<Grid Visibility="{Binding IsEditing, Converter={StaticResource
BooleanToVisibilityConverter}}">
<!-- Define your editable UI here -->
</Grid>
</Grid>
</DataTemplate>
You could also define your own BooleanToVisibilityConverter class that has an IsInverted property, so that you can just use the one IsEditing property. You'd need to declare two Converters still, like this:
<Converters:BoolToVisibilityConverter x:Key="BoolToVisibilityConverter" />
<Converters:BoolToVisibilityConverter x:Key="InvertedBoolToVisibilityConverter"
IsInverted="True" />
Then your XAML would be like this:
<Grid Visibility="{Binding IsEditing, Converter={StaticResource
InvertedBoolToVisibilityConverter}}">
<!-- Define your uneditable UI here -->
</Grid>
<Grid Visibility="{Binding IsEditing, Converter={StaticResource
BoolToVisibilityConverter}}">
<!-- Define your editable UI here -->
</Grid>

WPF Bind to element in parent window

I'm trying to bind element's property in a child control to an element's property ina parent window, it doesn't work..
Here is png of what I'm trying to do:
Here is the xaml that doesn't work:
CurrentDate="{Binding ElementName=TimeBar, Path=SelectionStart,RelativeSource={RelativeSource Mode=FindAncestor, AncestorType=Window}}"
Thanks.

create a dependency property in your usercontrol and then bind to it in your window
something like that: DependencyProperty implementations you can find all around here on stackoverflow
<YourUsercontrol x:Name="uc">
<YourSomeControl CurrentDate="{Binding ElementName=uc, Path=MyDp}"/>
</YourUsercontrol>
xaml window
<Window>
<ElementInParent x:Name="eip" />
<YourUsercontrol MyDp="{Binding ElementName=eip, Path=PropertyFromElementInParent}"/>

based on the following Answer LINK the SelectionStart is not a Bindable Probperty by default so you need to create a attached behavior or something similar

Binding ElementName along with Relative Source is not correct approach.
Besides the UserControl does not know the ElementName of the Parent since the two are in different XAML.
One approach is to set the data context of user control with the element name you want to bind it to and then use normal binding Path.
As shown in the example below:
In main window, we have a textbox and a user control.
We are setting data context of the user control with the text box.
In the user control, we are binding the Text property of the DataContext (which is essentially TextBox of main window).
<Window
xmlns:self="clr-namespace:experiments"
>
<StackPanel>
<TextBox x:Name="Name" Width="100"/>
<self:UserControl1 DataContext="{Binding ElementName=Name}"/>
</StackPanel>
</Window>
<UserControl x:Class="experiments.UserControl1">
<Grid>
<TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=Text}" Width="100" Background="AliceBlue" Height="50"/>
</Grid>
</UserControl>

WPF Issues with binding to styled button

I have created a RadioButton style which I use across my application. The display part of which uses the content presenter to display whatever content I added to the button:
<ContentPresenter>
<ContentPresenter.ContentTemplate>
<DataTemplate>
<Grid>
<TextBlock Text="{TemplateBinding Content}" />
</Grid>
</DataTemplate>
</ContentPresenter.ContentTemplate>
</ContentPresenter>
I'm then attempting to bind a decimal with a string formatter to the styled button like so:
<RadioButton Content="{Binding Stake, StringFormat={}{0:C}}" Style="{DynamicResource NeutralSelectorButtonStyle}" />
Stake is a decimal within a ViewModel which is set as the DataContext. When I run this up the content coming through is blank.
I made a change using a label in the DataTemplate rather than a TextBlock, this displayed the decimal but had not formatted it.
Can anyone explain why this is happening and possibly provide a solution.
If you require any more information just ask :)
Thanks in advance.

You are almost there just instead of setting the string format inside binding you should use ContentStringFormat property when in ContentControls.
Take a look at this Label (it works with any content control):
<Label Content="{Binding Path=MaxLevelofInvestment}" ContentStringFormat="Amount is {0}"/>
ContentPresenter also has this property:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.controls.contentpresenter.contentstringformat%28v=vs.110%29.aspx
Try it out. I hope it works for you.

Accessing a list picker inside a PanoramaHeader Template

I have a panorama control in which I have create a header template to add a list picker inside it. (Just like the peoples hub to select social accounts)
<DataTemplate x:Key="PanoramaItemHeaderTemplate">
<ContentPresenter>
<StackPanel Height="129">
<TextBlock Text="{Binding}" FontSize="72" Margin="0,7,0,0" />
<toolkit:ListPicker x:Name="listPick" Margin="0,-21,0,0" BorderThickness="0">
<toolkit:ListPickerItem Content="twitter"></toolkit:ListPickerItem>
</toolkit:ListPicker>
</StackPanel>
</ContentPresenter>
</DataTemplate>
The panorama control is inside the MainPage.xaml file and I want to have access to the listpicker from the code behind to be able to populate it, and handle it selection events.
I don't know how to do this. I tried adding the x:name property to the list picker I don't have access to it in the MainPage code behind.
Any idea on how to approach this is very welcomed, thanks!

From what you have now, the quickest way to do what you want is to traverse the visual tree
See here for the implementation:
How to access a specific item in a Listbox with DataTemplate?

You cannot access the ListPicker by x:Name because it is not unambiguous: there is a ListPicker generated for each PanoramaItem in your Panorama. So the first question is, is it really the think you want to do? If so you need to populate it using a binding (ItemSource)

You can access an element inside another resource, consider this example:
<Grid Name="myGrid">
<StackPanel x:Name="stack1">
<TextBlock x:Name="abc"/>
</StackPanel>
</Grid>
We can only access the Grid myGrid in code by default. To get reference to the StackPanel we can do this:
StackPanel myStack=myGrid.FindName("stack1") as Stackpanel;
After that we can get reference to the TextBlock:
TextBlock myTextBlock=myStack.FindName("abc") as TextBlock;
You can modify myTextBlock after that as you may like. You can apply the same technique in your case and it will work.
Hope that helps :).