Nest Content inside ContentView

Question

I don't know if the title is clear enough, so let me explain what I am trying to do:

I have a LoggingField class which is composed of the following:

XAML:

<ContentView.Content>
    <StackLayout>
        <Label Style="{DynamicResource LabelTitle}" x:Name="LabelTitle"/>
        <View x:Name="FieldContent"/>
    </StackLayout>
</ContentView.Content>

C#:

[ContentProperty(nameof(Field))]
[XamlCompilation(XamlCompilationOptions.Compile)]
public partial class LoggingField : ContentView
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Creates a new Logging field.
    /// </summary>
    public LoggingField()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
    }

    //
    // PUBLIC
    //

    // PROPERTIES

    /// <summary>
    /// The field's content.
    /// </summary>
    public View Field
    {
        set => FieldContent = value;
        get => FieldContent;
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// The field's title.
    /// </summary>
    public string Text
    {
        set => LabelTitle.Text = value;
        get => LabelTitle.Text;
    }
}

Page XAML:

<logcontent:LoggingField Text="Test Title:">
    <Entry Placeholder="PlaceholderText"/>
</logcontent:LoggingField>

From it, you can see that I want the <Entry Placeholder="PlaceholderText"/> to override the <View x:Name="FieldContent"/> object, but I can't make it work. It would always overwrite the entire ContentView, displaying only the placeholder Entry .

The only advancement I've made was adding [ContentProperty(nameof(Field))] in the ContentView's C# class, which made its original content be displayed but then the Entry object won't appear anymore.

So how can I make the Entry object correctly override the View object inside the ContentView? Thanks in advance.

PS: I've tried replacing <View x:Name="FieldContent"/> with <ContentPresenter x:Name="FieldContent"/> and using ContentPresenter.Content instead, but to no avail.

Answer 1

You can create ControlTemplate in code behind(viewmodel), and bind it in xaml.

Code behind

ControlTemplate MyTemplate = new ControlTemplate(()=> {
      return new Entry { Placeholder= "PlaceholderText" };
});

Page Xaml

<local:LoggingField ControlTemplate="{Binding MyTemplate}"/>

However, this is total not recommended, the best way is to place ControlTemplate in xaml.