Get Ancestor Source in Wpf

Question

I am trying to get the ancestor ItemsControl.ItemTemplate source as my DataGrid source but i could not handle the case. I tried the following case in my xaml. But it did not work and datagrid is empty.

Here is my xaml:

<ItemsControl ItemsSource="{Binding Accounts}">
    <ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>
        <DataTemplate>
            <Expander ExpandDirection="Down" FlowDirection=" RightToLeft">
                <Expander.Header>
                    <DataGrid FlowDirection="LeftToRight"
                            ItemsSource="{RelativeSource={RelativeSource FindAncestor, AncestorType={x:Type ItemTemplate}}}">
                        <DataGrid.Columns>
                            <DataGridTextColumn Binding="{Binding UserName}" />
                            <DataGridTextColumn Binding="{Binding Password}" />
                        </DataGrid.Columns>
                    </DataGrid>
                </Expander.Header>
           </Expander>
      </DataTemplate>
   </ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>

Accounts property implementation is like:

public List<User> Accounts = new List<User>();
Accounts.Add(new User("userName1","password1"));
Accounts.Add(new User("userName2","password2"));

And my User.cs is like:

public class User : INotifyPropertyChanged
{
        public string UserName{get; set;}
        public string Password{get; set;}


       public UserAccount(string userName, string password)
       {
          UserName = userName;
          Password = password;
       }
 }

Answer 1

Basically, this code doesn't create a binding

ItemsSource="{RelativeSource={RelativeSource FindAncestor, AncestorType={x:Type ItemTemplate}}}"

also ancestor type is incorrect.

try this Binding:

ItemsSource="{Binding Path=DataContext.Accounts, RelativeSource={RelativeSource FindAncestor, AncestorType={x:Type ItemsControl}}}"

or use ElementName:

<ItemsControl Name="LstAccounts" ItemsSource="{Binding Accounts}">

and

ItemsSource="{Binding Path=DataContext.Accounts, ElementName=LstAccounts}"

---

code above fixes binding, but produces unexpected results. here is a solution to show a single object in a DataGrid

for ItemSource binding I created a converter ( my own older answer )

public class ItemsSourceConverter: IValueConverter
{
    public object Convert(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, CultureInfo culture)
    {
        // doesn't allow to add new rows in DataGrid
        return Enumerable.Repeat(value, 1).ToArray();            
    }

    public object ConvertBack(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, CultureInfo culture)
    {
        throw new NotImplementedException();
    }
}

and here is modified ItemsControl. Converter is stored in resources and used in ItemsSource binding. DataGrid autogenerates columns

<ItemsControl ItemsSource="{Binding Accounts}">
    <ItemsControl.Resources>
        <local:ItemsSourceConverter x:Key="Enumerator"/>
    </ItemsControl.Resources>
    <ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>
        <DataTemplate>
            <Expander ExpandDirection="Down" FlowDirection=" RightToLeft">
                <Expander.Header>
                    <DataGrid FlowDirection="LeftToRight" 
                              ItemsSource="{Binding ., Converter={StaticResource Enumerator}}"/>
                </Expander.Header>
            </Expander>
        </DataTemplate>
    </ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>
</ItemsControl>

here is a screenshot