I showed in this blog post how you can get a handle to an element within a DataTemplate. You need to call the FindName method on the instance of the DataTemplate, and pass the name of the element you’re interested in, and an instance of the object the template is being applied to (in your case, the UserControl).

Thanks,
Bea

I have a doubt about getting an element from a DataTemplate. I will explain the scenario.

I have created a user control ( let say it as X )which exposes property which of of type DataTemplate. Another user control( let say it as Y ) uses X. to create another usable user control Z. But while we are applying template to X from Y, I need some element in the DataTemplate to do some custom operation. But I am not able to get that. I am providing the code here to check.

Here is the template
??DataTemplate x:Key=”dingTemplate”??
??StackPanel Orientation=”Horizontal” Margin=”2″ Name=”stak” ??
??Grid Width=”{Binding RelativeSource={RelativeSource AncestorType={x:Type StackPanel}}, Path=ActualWidth}”??
??Grid.ColumnDefinitions??
??ColumnDefinition Width=”Auto”/??
??ColumnDefinition Width=”*”/??
??ColumnDefinition Width=”Auto”/??
??/Grid.ColumnDefinitions??
??TextBlock Text=”xxxx :” Grid.Column=”0″ Padding=”4,2,4,2″ VerticalAlignment=”Center”/??
??TextBox Name=”yyy” Grid.Column=”1″ Margin=”4,0,4,0″ /??
??Button Name=”buttonTemp” Content=”ZZZ” Grid.Column=”2″ Padding=”12,2,12,2″/??
??/Grid??
??/StackPanel??
??/DataTemplate??

And it is applied to another user control like

??DingDongControl x:Name=”dingdongCtrl” CustomHeaderTemplate=”{StaticResource dingTemplate}” ??

I need the element Button ( “buttonTemp”) from that template. How I can get that

Vishal

I have a few questions about what you’re trying to do. What do you mean by “propagate the SelectedValue back to the Address”? What exactly do you want to happen when you select a value? What does your data structure look like, is it a Dictionary of [CountryName, Country] and an instance of Address that holds the SelectedValue?

I should be able to help you once I understand exactly what your app looks like.

Thanks,
Bea

public class Address
{
public string CountryName
{ get; set; }
public string Country
{ get; set; }
}

Binding the two properties to a TextBox is easy enough, but what about a ComboBox, where the ComboBox is bound to a list of possible values (in this case a Dictionary`1[String, String]). I’ve looked everywhere but I can’t figure out how to propogate the SelectedValue back to the Address without going into codebehind. Is it even possible to do this declaratively?

Ah, I haven’t tried pre-compiling the MarkupExtension but I believe you, and thanks for the tip.

I opened the bug about the Invalidate calls, but that hasn’t been looked at, so I don’t know the technical reasons why it’s behaving this way. I am hoping it’s a simple bug that we can fix for next version. I agree with you we shouldn’t have to call those manually.

Thanks for your comments.
Bea

Sheva