I am using a ListBox with a DataTemplate as shown below (xaml simplified and variable names changed).

<ListBox ItemsSource="{Binding Path=ObservCollectionItems}"
         SelectedItem="{Binding Path=SelectedItemVar, Mode=TwoWay}">
         <ListBox.ItemTemplate>
            <DataTemplate>
                <StackPanel>
                    <TextBlock Text="{Binding SomeVar}" />
                    <Border>
                        <StackPanel>
                            <Button Content="String1"
                                    Command="{Binding DataContext.Command1}
                                    RelativeSource={RelativeSource FindAncestor, ListBox, 1}}" />
                            <Button Content="String2" 
                                    Command="{Binding DataContext.Command2}
                                    RelativeSource={RelativeSource FindAncestor, ListBox, 1}}" />
                        </StackPanel>
                    </Border>
                </StackPanel>
            </DataTemplate>
         <ListBox.ItemTemplate>
 </ListBox>

I need the SelectedItemVar (dependency property) to update when I click on one of the buttons. SelectedItemVar is then used for the respective button's command. SelectedItemVar does update when I click on the TextBlock or the Border, but not when I click either button. I found a non-MVVM solution to this problem here. I do not want to add code in the file-behind to solve this, as they did in the link.

Is there a clean solution that can be done in XAML. Beyond the non-MVVM solutions, I have not found anyone with this problem. I would have thought this was fairly common.

Finally, I found this Command="{Binding DataContext.CommandName} RelativeSource={RelativeSource FindAncestor, ListBox, 1} for the Command binding. I do not fully understand what it is doing, but I do know that the command wasn't firing when I was binding directly to CommandName.