Binding to Object

With the Q1 2015 release version of UI for WPF, RadRadialMenu provides a new way to easily populate its items in a MVVM manner. The control now supports data binding to a collection of business objects through the new ItemsSource property.

The following example will demonstrate how to bind RadRadialMenu with a collection of custom objects from the ViewModel.

Implementing a Custom Object

In order to be able to successfully use the binding feature of the control, the used custom objects need to implement the IRadialMenuItem interface. The interface provides all the required properties for RadRadialMenuItem:

• C#
• VB.NET

public class CustomMenuItem : IRadialMenuItem 
{ 
    public bool CanUserSelect { get; set; } 
    public System.Windows.Input.ICommand Command { get; set; } 
    public object CommandParameter { get; set; } 
    public System.Windows.UIElement CommandTarget { get; set; } 
    public Brush ContentSectorBackground { get; set; } 
    public string GroupName { get; set; } 
    public object Header { get; set; } 
    public object IconContent { get; set; } 
    public bool IsSelected { get; set; } 
    public IEnumerable<IRadialMenuItem> ItemsSource { get; set; } 
    public object ToolTipContent { get; set; } 
} 

Public Class CustomMenuItem 
    Implements IRadialMenuItem 
    Public Property CanUserSelect As Boolean Implements IRadialMenuItem.CanUserSelect 
    Public Property Command As ICommand Implements IRadialMenuItem.Command 
    Public Property CommandParameter As Object Implements IRadialMenuItem.CommandParameter 
    Public Property CommandTarget As UIElement Implements IRadialMenuItem.CommandTarget 
    Public Property ContentSectorBackground As Brush Implements IRadialMenuItem.ContentSectorBackground 
    Public Property GroupName As String Implements IRadialMenuItem.GroupName 
    Public Property Header As Object Implements IRadialMenuItem.Header 
    Public Property IconContent As Object Implements IRadialMenuItem.IconContent 
    Public Property IsSelected As Boolean Implements IRadialMenuItem.IsSelected 
    Public Property ItemsSource As IEnumerable(Of IRadialMenuItem) Implements IRadialMenuItem.ItemsSource 
    Public Property ToolTipContent As Object Implements IRadialMenuItem.ToolTipContent 
End Class 

Note that if you need to change any of those properties at run time you would need implement also the INotifyPropertyChanged, interface or inherit from the built in ViewModelBase class in order to raise PropertyChanged of required properties.

Implementing a ViewModel

The next thing is to simply define the needed source collection of CustomMenuItems in the ViewModel. Once this is done we will be able to bind it to the ItemsSource property.

• C#
• VB.NET

public class ViewModel : ViewModelBase 
{ 
    public ObservableCollection<CustomMenuItem> MenuItems { get; set; } 
 
    public ViewModel() 
    { 
        this.MenuItems = this.GetMenuItems(); 
    } 
 
    private ObservableCollection<CustomMenuItem> GetMenuItems() 
    { 
        var collection = new ObservableCollection<CustomMenuItem>(); 
 
        var fileItem = new CustomMenuItem { Header = "File" }; 
        collection.Add(fileItem); 
 
        var uploadItem = new CustomMenuItem { Header = "Upload" }; 
        collection.Add(uploadItem); 
 
        var mailItem = new CustomMenuItem { Header = "Mail" }; 
        mailItem.ItemsSource = new ObservableCollection<CustomMenuItem> 
            { 
                new CustomMenuItem { Header = "Inbox" }, 
                new CustomMenuItem { Header = "Drafts" }, 
                new CustomMenuItem { Header = "Sent" }, 
                new CustomMenuItem { Header = "Deleted" } 
            }; 
        collection.Add(mailItem); 
 
        var favoritesItem = new CustomMenuItem { Header = "Favorites" }; 
        collection.Add(favoritesItem); 
 
        return collection; 
    } 
} 

Public Class ViewModel 
        Inherits ViewModelBase 
 
        Public Property MenuItems() As ObservableCollection(Of CustomMenuItem) 
 
        Public Sub New() 
            Me.MenuItems = Me.GetMenuItems() 
        End Sub 
 
        Private Function GetMenuItems() As ObservableCollection(Of CustomMenuItem) 
            Dim collection = New ObservableCollection(Of CustomMenuItem)() 
 
            Dim fileItem = New CustomMenuItem With {.Header = "File"} 
            collection.Add(fileItem) 
 
            Dim uploadItem = New CustomMenuItem With {.Header = "Upload"} 
            collection.Add(uploadItem) 
 
            Dim mailItem = New CustomMenuItem With {.Header = "Mail"} 
            mailItem.ItemsSource = New ObservableCollection(Of CustomMenuItem) From { _ 
                New CustomMenuItem With {.Header = "Inbox"}, _ 
                New CustomMenuItem With {.Header = "Drafts"}, _ 
                New CustomMenuItem With {.Header = "Sent"}, _ 
                New CustomMenuItem With {.Header = "Deleted"} _ 
            } 
            collection.Add(mailItem) 
 
            Dim favoritesItem = New CustomMenuItem With {.Header = "Favorites"} 
            collection.Add(favoritesItem) 
 
            Return collection 
        End Function 
    End Class 

Binding the Collection in XAML

The final step would be to set the ViewModel as DataContext and bind the already created collection to the ItemsSource property of RadRadialMenu as shown below:

• XAML

<telerik:RadRadialMenu ItemsSource="{Binding MenuItems}" /> 

You can see the final result on Figure 1.

Figure 1: RadRadialMenu populated from the bound collection of CustomMenuItem objects

Find a runnable project of the previous example in the WPF Samples GitHub repository.