How to bind WP7 user control element to a property of the user control

Question

I've built a user control called UserControl1. Inside the control I havea textblock. In the UserControl1 class, I've created a property called DisplayText. How can I bind the textblock's text value to the DisplayText property of the user control?

Answer 1

If you have a UserControl as follows:

<UserControl class="MyUserControl">
  <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot">
    <TextBlock/>
  </Grid>
</UserControl>

And MyUserControl defines a DisplayText dependency property. Within the constructor set the DataContext of LayoutRoot to the user control:

public MyUserControl()
{
  LayoutRoot.DataContext = this;
}

You can now bind the TextBlock as follows:

<UserControl class="MyUserControl">
  <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot">
    <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=DisplayText}/>
  </Grid>
</UserControl>

This works because the DataContext of the grid is inherited by your TextBlock . This then becomes the source of the binding.