Binding height, width, etc to a variable

Question

I don't know if I'm just not understanding what I've found so far, or if it really is too complex to apply to such a simple idea as it seems. I'm trying to bind a button's height and width to variables that are stored in user settings. I can't seem to get this to work, or rather I simply don't how to, as in what commands to use. The issue lies in not knowing what to put in the Binding field of the xaml. If anyone could point to a guide that involves just this, could explain what to do I would be very appreciative.

Edit: I've solved the problem of binding the variable, it now saves to the User setting file when it should. Now I'm having an issue with the value stored in user setting beig overwritten every time the program loads with the default value. I am running this through VS debug menu selection, so I suppose the issue could lie there, but I've tried publishing it and running and still getting the same results. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Assuming by 'User Settings' you mean the built-in Settings not a custom implementation:

See http://blogs.windowsclient.net/bragi/archive/2008/07/03/using-settings-in-wpf-or-how-to-store-retrieve-window-pos-and-loc.aspx for an example of this - essentially you want to set up TwoWay bindings to Properties.Settings.Default : note that you have to define the settings in advance using the Settings UI, and you have to call Properties.Settings.Default.Save() when the app exits to persist the settings.

Answer 2

I'm posting this answer so that hopefully somebody else can read it and avoid such a ridiculous problem. First off, as far as the initial question, Staurt answered it quite nicely. But my edit above brought up a new but related problem. I ended up fixing it on accident.

The whole purpose of this was that I have a slider bar that adjusts the size of a shortcut button dock. The slider worked, but as I said above it would reset itself every time I reloaded. The issue in this case was that I have the buttons set to resize as the slider moves, so I used the slider_ValueChanged event as you can see here:

    private void iconSizeSlider_ValueChanged(object sender, RoutedPropertyChangedEventArgs<double> e)
    {            
            try
            {
                Properties.Settings.Default.iconHeight = Convert.ToInt32(iconSizeSlider.Value);
                Properties.Settings.Default.iconWidth = Convert.ToInt32(iconSizeSlider.Value * 1.3);
                Properties.Settings.Default.Save();
                //iconWidth.Text = buttonWidth.ToString();
                //ButtonRefresh();
            }
            catch (FormatException)
            {

            }

    }

While trying to use the Run To Cursor part of VS2010, I got tired of having to F11 through a multitude of loading steps, so as a debugging tool I added a bool fullyInitialized flag. This solved the problem completely. Apparently (which I didn't realize before), when the slider was first initialized it considered the value to have changed, so when it ran through the ValueChanged method, it reset everything to default. So adding a simple conditional around the try-catch to check for the fullyInitialized flag solved everything. Hopefully this helps somebody else.