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Introduction

Silverlight 2 has introduced many interesting features and controls but it misses something that Silverlight 3 makes possible –easily creating and manipulating rich data forms. These series of posts will help you when creating rich data forms in Silverlight 3 in your projects. Silverlight 3 introduces a new control, called DataForm. It enables various methods for display, edit, update and navigation through data.

The DataForm control is like the DataGrid control in Silverlight 2. But while the DataGrid control is used to manipulate a list of items, the DataForm control focuses on the item itself.

1. Introduction

In the previous part of the article I showed the first part of most important patterns and practices used in the Composite Application Library (CAL). In the second part I will show you the second group – the Modularity patterns.

2. Patterns and Practices in the CAL - quick overview

As a whole the patterns used in CAL can be separated in three main groups:

• Composite User Interface patterns (part 1)
  • Composite
  • Composite View
  • Command
  • Adapter
• Modularity patterns (part 2)
  • Separated interface and Plug In
  • Service Locator
  • Dependency Injection
  • Event Aggregator
  • Façade
  • Registry
• Testability patterns (part 3)
  • Inversion of control
  • Separated presentation

3.

1. Introduction

In previous articles I showed how the most famous composite design patterns (Model – View – Controller and Model – View – Presenter) can be used with great success in Silverlight despite of the different programming model in Silverlight. My latest article targets a completely new pattern which has been created especially for WPF, but it is also very suitable for Silverlight applications. Today I’ve decided to continue my series of articles with OOP approach and to present you the main design patterns and practices used in the Composite Application Library (CAL).

1. Introduction

Whatever software application you want to create, the most important problem that must be solved is the tight coupling. Mixing one layer with another is a very common mistake and it is the main reason for your application to be tightly coupled. For example: as a practical example in this article I will create a simple data entry application, which purpose is to load, create, edit, delete and save data. The most straightforward way to create the application is to put everything in the user interface (handling the button’s click events and writing the code there). It is the easiest way but it is far from the best. This will produce a low quality code and high complexity. And when the things are tightly coupled, one change can lead you into chasing breaking changes in the whole code. So the most important thing is to keep the layers separate, one layer – one responsibility. Yes, it is true, that creating an application with separate tiers requires additional work, but this may save you a headache in the future.

The most famous solutions and approaches (patterns) for creating a multi layer application are the MVC and MVP patterns. Since Silverlight does not require reinventing the wheel, these patterns and practices can be applied with great success when you create a Silverlight application. In previous articles I showed you how the Model-View-Presenter (MVP) pattern and the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern can be used in Silverlight. Today I decided to continue and to present you another pattern – it is the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM). MVVM is tailor-made for WPF and it is an adaptation of the MVC and MVP.

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Note: This article is submitted by Pencho Popadiyn for Silverlight: Write and Win contest.Thanks a lot, Pencho! Hello All, Please drop a comment if you like it.

1. Introduction

In the previous article I showed you how Silverlight and the Model – View – Presenter pattern (MVP) can interact with each other. Today I decided to move on ahead in the world of Object Oriented Programming and to present you another big player on scene – the Model – View – Controller (MVC) pattern. Actually the MVC is a MVP’s ancestor, and I think it must be studied first, but that is another topic. Before I start, I want to mention that the purpose of that article is not to compare both of the “brothers”, but to present you the world through the MVC eyes.

Short Introduction to the RIAs World

Nowadays the web space is full of different sites. Old-fashioned HTML is slowly being replaced by the new Rich Internet Applications (RIA). But why are they so popular? The passion of the RIA technology is that it tends to reform the static HTML sites in order to make them look more like Desktop applications.

Why Silverlight?

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1. Introduction

In the previous part of the article I described how to create a simple analog clock in Silverlight using pattern oriented approach. It was focused not so much on Silverlight but on the object oriented programming. In that part I will focus your attention on the process of improving the view (the clock face), making it much better and user-friendly. I will look at little more advance topics such as creating gradient brushes, creating custom figures, making transformations and of course adding movement and interactivity with animations.

So let’s roll up our sleeves and set to work.

Finally we came to the editing part that concerns the DataGrid control in Silverlight 2. After we took a quick look at the control, learned how to make some basic customizations to it and defined the three types of columns available, now we're going to see how can we edit the information. The DataGrid control has an integrated editing functionality. By double-clicking on a cell you automatically go into edit mode for that cell. If you want to cancel the edit just press Esc and if you want to submit the changes press Enter or change the selection. The purpose of this article is to show how to use this functionality and combine it with some properties and events.

Note: This article is submitted by Thomas Holloway for Silverlight Contest: Write and Win.Thanks a lot, Thomas! Hello All, Please drop a comment if you like it.

Overview
Alright, so now that we know what a simple messenger looks like with WCF callbacks, what does it take to put one together in Silverlight? For starters, Silverlight does not have the same capabilities as the full WCF framework. WCF callbacks in Silverlight must be done through HTTP Polling and therefore we don’t really have a truly bi-directional environment. Instead, we must manually setup the message asynchronous message architecture with a few special classes in a new System.ServiceModel.PollingDuplex library.

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You may be familiar with the DZone network and our series of Refcardz. We are proud to announce that our newest refcard on Silverlight 2 has just been released and we would be honored if you can look through it and give us any review or feedback. Any supportive mention on your website/blog will be greatly appreciated :).

Please see information below:

Light up the web! Silverlight is Microsoft’s offering for designing, developing, and delivering rich interactive applications over the internet. These applications can run on all major platforms and in all major browsers.