How to access any control inside Hubsection Datatemplate in Windows 8.1 store

Question

Please tell me how to access flipview control inside Hubsection *DataTemplate*

Shebeen

Did you try anything so far? – Felishafelita

Yes... recently i tried this snippet of code FlipView fv = GetTemplateChild("TheFipView") as FlipView; – Shebeen

Check this : How do I access a control inside a XAML DataTemplate? – Ruella

@Ruella I would like to know as well, I tried the method outlined by Jerry Nixon, but I'm stuck at the foreach loop. For HubSection there are no items to loop through. (i.e. no Items property) But I don't have flipview control, just some items like map, grid etc inside the hubsection – Aquinas

Answer 1

I don't know if you managed to solve your problem already. If you didn't here is how.

private DependencyObject FindChildControl<T>(DependencyObject control, string ctrlName)
    {
        int childNumber = VisualTreeHelper.GetChildrenCount(control);
        for (int i = 0; i < childNumber; i++)
        {
            DependencyObject child = VisualTreeHelper.GetChild(control, i);
            FrameworkElement fe = child as FrameworkElement;
            // Not a framework element or is null
            if (fe == null) return null;

            if (child is T && fe.Name == ctrlName)
            {
                // Found the control so return
                return child;
            }
            else
            {
                // Not found it - search children
                DependencyObject nextLevel = FindChildControl<T>(child, ctrlName);
                if (nextLevel != null)
                    return nextLevel;
            }
        }
        return null;
    }

usage is very simple, for example in my case

ComboBox cb= FindChildControl<ComboBox>(HUB_HC, "SemanaHC") as ComboBox;

Where HUB_HC is my HubSection name and SemanaHC is a combobox inside that HubSection witch is also inside of a StackPanel. It works for me and it's simple to use

Reference: How to access a Control inside the data template in C# Metro UI in the code behind

Ka

the combo box i get using this method returns null, any idea why? – Functionary

Answer code works great (minimal control tree). Thanks! – Chorography

This code snippet is excellent, thank you! I personally modified it to have a return type of T and say where T : DependencyObject. – Assamese

this works to find one element only, but if I am looping inside a ListView and for every ListViewItem I want to access its StackPanel which is in its DataTemplate? I tried looping but i can access only the first stackPanel of the first ListViewItem! Any help? – Division

Answer 2

The best way to deal with this is to have a user control inside the DataTemplate. And UserControl will have the Flipview, so you can easily access the flipview there.

Gardas

but isn't it the same thing? How will you access the FlipView in this way? – Division

Lets say you have Page : HubPage where you have Hub control. Now in one of the sections you have this usercontrol , in that usercontrol you can access the flipview – Gardas

Answer 3

To access any control inside a HubSection you can do something like this:

var sec = MyHub.Sections[2];
var btn = sec.FindVisualChild("MyButton") as Button;

EDIT: in order to use FindVisualChild extension method you have to use MyToolkit project. You can download it as a Nuget Package and see the project here.

Hope it helps! :D

EDIT 2: The code for FindVisualChild can be found here: https://mytoolkit.codeplex.com/SourceControl/latest#Shared/UI/FrameworkElementExtensions.cs

Implore

'Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls.HubSection' does not contain a definition for 'FindVisualChild' and no extension method 'FindVisualChild' accepting a first argument of type 'Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls.HubSection' could be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?) – Unexpressive

I added these MyToolkit NuGet packages but FindVisualChild returns null.. Why? – Cellaret

Answer 4

var sec = testHub.Sections[0]; var gridViewSelect = sec.FindName("Section4Header") as GridView;

FindName does the trick...

Gatias

Return null in Windows Phone 8.1 – Saucer

Returns null for Windows Store App 8.1 – Chorography

Returns null on Windows 8.1 – Petasus