Specifying design-time type for items of non-generic collection

Question

I'm trying to specify the design-time DataContext of all my .xaml files in order to get maximum use out of Resharper and its ability to refactor and warn about non-existing bindings. I'm having trouble with a non-generic collection.

Keep in mind throughout this post that everything works perfectly at runtime, this is purely a design-time issue.

Consider the following snippets:

MyList.cs

public class MyList : IList { ... }

MyClass.cs

public class MyClass {
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Description { get; set; }
}

MyViewModel.cs

public class MyViewModel {
    public MyList ItemsToDisplay { get; set; } // filled with items of type MyClass
}

MyWindow.xaml

<Window x:Class="MyWindow"
        xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
        xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
        xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"
        xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"
        xmlns:telerik="http://schemas.telerik.com/2008/xaml/presentation"
        xmlns:my="clr-namespace:MyNameSpace"
        mc:Ignorable="d" d:DataContext="{d:DesignInstance my:MyViewModel}">

    <telerik:RadGridView ItemsSource="{Binding ItemsToDisplay}">
        <telerik:RadGridView.Columns>
            <telerik:GridViewDataColumn DataMemberBinding="{Binding Name}" Header="Name"/>
            <telerik:GridViewDataColumn DataMemberBinding="{Binding Description}" Header="Description"/>
        </telerik:RadGridView.Columns>
    </telerik:RadGridView>

</Window>

The problem with this setup is I get the following warnings on the bindings of the columns: Cannot resolve property 'Name' in context of type 'object'.

If I change MyViewModel.cs to have a property IList<MyClass> ItemsToDisplay instead, Resharper will successfully recognise that the collection has items of type MyClass and resolve the datacontext properly, getting rid of the warnings. However, because of code constraints, I cannot change the type of the collection.

So my question is: Is there some hidden xaml magic that will allow me to do something like this and specify the type of the collection? Pseudocode:

<telerik:RadGridView ItemsSource="{Binding ItemsToDisplay, d:ItemsSourceType=my:MyClass}">

Answer 1

I would suggest you look into TypeDescriptor 's and create a custom type descriptor for your item type. Not sure this will work in your specific case but it's a possible route to try at least.