Silverlight Tip of the Day #60 – How to load a XAML Control From a File or String
If you have a control written in XAML that is included in your project you can load and create it directly from file by using the method: System.Windows.Markup.XamlReader.Load().This method can also be used to directly create a Silverlight control from a string.
To demonstrate this I have created two functions called LoadFromXAML(). The first function takes takes as a parameter a URI that points to the XAML file in your project you want to load. The second takes as a parameter a string representation of the control.
public static object LoadFromXaml(Uri uri)
{
System.Windows.Resources.StreamResourceInfo streamInfo = System.Windows.Application.GetResourceStream(uri);
if ((streamInfo != null) && (streamInfo.Stream != null))
{
using (System.IO.StreamReader reader = new System.IO.StreamReader(streamInfo.Stream))
{
return System.Windows.Markup.XamlReader.Load(reader.ReadToEnd());
}
}
return null;
}
public static object LoadFromXamlString(string xamlControl)
{
return System.Windows.Markup.XamlReader.Load(xamlControl);
}
The above methods return a generic object that can be typecast to the object you are loading. For example:
Button myButton = (Button)LoadFromXaml(new Uri("/LoadXaml;component/MyButton.xaml", UriKind.Relative));
or
string buttonXAML = "<Button xmlns='http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007' Width=\"100\" Height=\"100\" Content=\"Click Me\"></Button>";
Button myButton = (Button) LoadFromXaml(buttonXAML);
Note that in the XAML you must declare a default XML namespace as highlighted below:
<Button xmlns='http://schemas.microsoft.com/client/2007' Width="100" Height="100" Content="Click Me"></Button>
If you do not declare this namespace, you will see the following error:
AG_E_PARSER_MISSING_DEFAULT_NAMESPACE [Line: 0 Position: 0]
Thank you,
--Mike Snow
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