WPF Data Bound Menus

Introduction
There is not just one way to make a WPF menu work. There are several techniques that you have to combine. Much of an application's menu is static. Some of it is context sensitive, and only appears in certain conditions. And in a few places, the menu items are dynamic, like recently opened files or currently open windows. This article demonstrates techniques for each case.
The sample code uses and includes an open source library called Update Controls that helps with data binding. Although the sample code depends upon it, these techniques themselves will work without Update Controls, except where otherwise stated.
Declarative Menu Structure
For the static menus, you want to declare the structure entirely in XAML. This gives you the greatest design/code separation, and the best tool support. Bind each of the menu items to an ICommand
property in your view model.
Comments