WPF: Multiple content presenters in a custom control?

Question

I'm trying to have a custom control that requires 2 or more areas of the XAML to be defined by a child control - that inherits from this control. I'm wondering if there's a way to define multiple contentpresenters and one which acts as the default content presenter

<MyControl>
      <MyControl.MyContentPresenter2>
           <Button Content="I am inside the second content presenter!"/>
      </MyControl.MyContentPresenter2>

      <Button Content="I am inside default content presenter" />
</MyControl>

Is this possible, how do I define this in the custom control's template?

Answer 1

The template can just bind the separate ContentPresenter instances like this (I've only set one property here but you'll likely want to set others):

<ContentPresenter Content="{TemplateBinding Content1}"/>
<ContentPresenter Content="{TemplateBinding Content2}"/>

The control itself should expose two properties for content and set the default using the ContentPropertyAttribute :

[ContentProperty("Content1")]
public class MyControl : Control
{
    // dependency properties for Content1 and Content2
    // you might also want Content1Template, Content2Template, Content1TemplateSelector, Content2TemplateSelector
}

Answer 2

You can use an "ItemsControl" with a custom template.

<ItemsControl>
    <ItemsControl.Style>
        <Style TargetType="ItemsControl">
            <Setter Property="Template">
                <Setter.Value>
                    <ControlTemplate>
                        <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal">
                            <ContentControl Content="{Binding RelativeSource={RelativeSource TemplatedParent}, Path=Items[0]}"/>
                            <ContentControl Content="{Binding RelativeSource={RelativeSource TemplatedParent}, Path=Items[1]}"/>
                            <ContentControl Content="{Binding RelativeSource={RelativeSource TemplatedParent}, Path=Items[2]}"/>
                        </StackPanel>
                    </ControlTemplate>
                </Setter.Value>
            </Setter>
        </Style>
    </ItemsControl.Style>
    <TextBlock Text="Item 1"/>
    <TextBlock Text="Item 2"/>
    <TextBlock Text="Item 3"/>
</ItemsControl>

Answer 3

Here's another option that doesn't require making a custom control and is more typesafe than doing the ItemsControl thing (if type safety is something you want..perhaps not):

...Use an attached property!

Create an attached property of the appropriate type. We happened to need a text control so I did a string TextContent attached property. Then create a TemplateBinding to it from the template, and when instantiating in Xaml set it there as well. Works nicely.