I’m back with my Silverlight for Windows Embedded tutorial. Sorry for
the long delay between step 3 and step 4,
the MVP summit and some work related issue prevented me from working on
the tutorial during
the last weeks.
In our first, second and third tutorial steps we implemented some very simple applications, just to understand
the basic structure of a Silverlight for Windows Embedded application, learn how to handle events and how to operate on images.
In this third step our sample application will be slightly more complicated, to introduce two new topics: list boxes and custom control. We will also learn how to create controls at runtime.
I choose to explain those topics together and provide a sample a bit more complicated than usual just to start to give
the feeling of how a “real” Silverlight for Windows Embedded application is organized.
As usual we can start using Expression Blend to define our main page. In this case we will have a listbox and a textblock.
Here’s
the XAML code:
<UserControl
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
x:Class="ListDemo.Page"
Width="640" Height="480" x:Name="ListPage" xmlns:ListDemo="clr-namespace:ListDemo">
<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
<ListBox Margin="19,57,19,66" x:Name="FileList" SelectionChanged="Filelist_SelectionChanged"/>
<TextBlock Height="35" Margin="19,8,19,0" VerticalAlignment="Top" TextWrapping="Wrap" x:Name="CurrentDir" Text="TextBlock" FontSize="20"/>
</Grid>
</UserControl>
In our listbox we will load a list of directories, starting from
the filesystem root (there are no drives in Windows CE,
the filesystem has a single root named “\”). When
the user clicks on an item inside
the list,
the corresponding directory path will be displayed in
the TextBlock object and
the subdirectories of
the selected branch will be shown inside
the list.
As you can see we declared an event handler for
the SelectionChanged event of our listbox.
We also used a different font size for
the TextBlock, to make it more readable. XAML and Expression Blend allow you to customize your UI pretty heavily, experiment with
the tools and discover how you can completely change
the aspect of your application without changing a single line of code!
Inside our ListBox we want to insert
the directory presenting a nice icon and their name, just like you are used to see them inside Windows 7 file explorer, for example. To get this we will define a user control. This is a custom object that will behave like “regular” Silverlight for Windows Embedded objects inside our application.
First of all we have to define
the look of our custom control, named DirectoryItem, using XAML:
<UserControl
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"
xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"
mc:Ignorable="d"
x:Class="ListDemo.DirectoryItem" Width="500" Height="80">
<StackPanel x:Name="LayoutRoot" Orientation="Horizontal">
<Canvas Width="31.6667" Height="45.9583" Margin="10,10,10,10" RenderTransformOrigin="0.5,0.5">
<Canvas.RenderTransform>
<TransformGroup>
<ScaleTransform/>
<SkewTransform/>
<RotateTransform Angle="-31.27"/>
<TranslateTransform/>
</TransformGroup>
</Canvas.RenderTransform>
<Rectangle Width="31.6667" Height="45.8414" Canvas.Left="0" Canvas.Top="0.116943" Stretch="Fill">
<Rectangle.Fill>
<LinearGradientBrush StartPoint="0.142631,0.75344" EndPoint="1.01886,0.75344">
<LinearGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>
<TransformGroup>
<SkewTransform CenterX="0.142631" CenterY="0.75344" AngleX="19.3128" AngleY="0"/>
<RotateTransform CenterX="0.142631" CenterY="0.75344" Angle="-35.3436"/>
</TransformGroup>
</LinearGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>
<LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops>
<GradientStop Color="#FF7B6802" Offset="0"/>
<GradientStop Color="#FFF3D42C" Offset="1"/>
</LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops>
</LinearGradientBrush>
</Rectangle.Fill>
</Rectangle>
<Rectangle Width="29.8441" Height="43.1517" Canvas.Left="0.569519" Canvas.Top="1.05249" Stretch="Fill">
<Rectangle.Fill>
<LinearGradientBrush StartPoint="0.142632,0.753441" EndPoint="1.01886,0.753441">
<LinearGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>
<TransformGroup>
<SkewTransform CenterX="0.142632" CenterY="0.753441" AngleX="19.3127" AngleY="0"/>
<RotateTransform CenterX="0.142632" CenterY="0.753441" Angle="-35.3437"/>
</TransformGroup>
</LinearGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>
<LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops>
<GradientStop Color="#FFCDCDCD" Offset="0.0833333"/>
<GradientStop Color="#FFFFFFFF" Offset="1"/>
</LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops>
</LinearGradientBrush>
</Rectangle.Fill>
</Rectangle>
<Rectangle Width="29.8441" Height="43.1517" Canvas.Left="0.455627" Canvas.Top="2.28036" Stretch="Fill">
<Rectangle.Fill>
<LinearGradientBrush StartPoint="0.142631,0.75344" EndPoint="1.01886,0.75344">
<LinearGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>
<TransformGroup>
<SkewTransform CenterX="0.142631" CenterY="0.75344" AngleX="19.3128" AngleY="0"/>
<RotateTransform CenterX="0.142631" CenterY="0.75344" Angle="-35.3436"/>
</TransformGroup>
</LinearGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>
<LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops>
<GradientStop Color="#FFCDCDCD" Offset="0.0833333"/>
<GradientStop Color="#FFFFFFFF" Offset="1"/>
</LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops>
</LinearGradientBrush>
</Rectangle.Fill>
</Rectangle>
<Rectangle Width="29.8441" Height="43.1517" Canvas.Left="0.455627" Canvas.Top="1.34485" Stretch="Fill">
<Rectangle.Fill>
<LinearGradientBrush StartPoint="0.142631,0.75344" EndPoint="1.01886,0.75344">
<LinearGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>
<TransformGroup>
<SkewTransform CenterX="0.142631" CenterY="0.75344" AngleX="19.3128" AngleY="0"/>
<RotateTransform CenterX="0.142631" CenterY="0.75344" Angle="-35.3436"/>
</TransformGroup>
</LinearGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>
<LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops>
<GradientStop Color="#FFCDCDCD" Offset="0.0833333"/>
<GradientStop Color="#FFFFFFFF" Offset="1"/>
</LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops>
</LinearGradientBrush>
</Rectangle.Fill>
</Rectangle>
<Rectangle Width="26.4269" Height="45.8414" Canvas.Left="0.227798" Canvas.Top="0" Stretch="Fill">
<Rectangle.Fill>
<LinearGradientBrush StartPoint="0.142631,0.75344" EndPoint="1.01886,0.75344">
<LinearGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>
<TransformGroup>
<SkewTransform CenterX="0.142631" CenterY="0.75344" AngleX="19.3127" AngleY="0"/>
<RotateTransform CenterX="0.142631" CenterY="0.75344" Angle="-35.3436"/>
</TransformGroup>
</LinearGradientBrush.RelativeTransform>
<LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops>
<GradientStop Color="#FF7B6802" Offset="0"/>
<GradientStop Color="#FFF3D42C" Offset="1"/>
</LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops>
</LinearGradientBrush>
</Rectangle.Fill>
</Rectangle>
<Rectangle Width="1.25301" Height="45.8414" Canvas.Left="1.70862" Canvas.Top="0.116943" Stretch="Fill" Fill="#FFEBFF07"/>
</Canvas>
<TextBlock Height="80" x:Name="Name" Width="448" TextWrapping="Wrap" VerticalAlignment="Center" FontSize="24" Text="Directory"/>
</StackPanel>
</UserControl>
As you can see, this XAML contains many graphic elements. Those elements are used to design
the folder icon.
The original drawing has been designed in Expression Design and then exported as XAML.
In Silverlight for Windows Embedded you can use vector images. This means that your images will look good even when scaled or rotated.
In our DirectoryItem custom control we have a TextBlock named Name, that will be used to display….(suspense)….
the directory name (I’m too
lazy to invent fancy names for controls, and using “boring” intuitive names will make code more readable, I hope!).
Now that we have some XAML code, we may execute XAML2CPP to generate part of
the aplication code for us.
We should then add references to our XAML2CPP generated resource file and include in our code and add a reference to
the XAML runtime library to our sources file (you can follow
the instruction of
the first tutorial step to do that),
To generate
the code used in this tutorial you need XAML2CPP ver 1.0.1.0, that is downloadable here:
http://geekswithblogs.net/WindowsEmbeddedCookbook/archive/2010/03/08/xaml2cpp-1.0.1.0.aspx
We can now create our usual simple Win32 application inside Platform Builder, using
the same step described in
the first chapter of this tutorial (http://geekswithblogs.net/WindowsEmbeddedCookbook/archive/2009/10/01/silverlight-for-embedded-tutorial.aspx).
We can declare a class for our main page, deriving it from
the template that XAML2CPP generated for us:
class ListPage : public TListPage<ListPage>
{
...
}
We will see
the ListPage class code in a short time, but before we will see
the code of our DirectoryItem user control. This object will be used to populate our list, one item for each directory.
To declare a user control things are a bit more complicated (but also in this case XAML2CPP will write most of
the “boilerplate” code for use.
To interact with a user control you should declare an interface. An interface defines
the functions of a user control that can be called inside
the application code. Our custom control is currently quite simple and we just need some member functions to store and retrieve a full pathname inside our control.
The control will display just
the last part of
the path inside
the control.
An interface is declared as a C++ class that has only abstract virtual members. It should also have an UUID associated with it. UUID means Universal Unique IDentifier and it’s a 128 bit number that will identify our interface without
the need of specifying its fully qualified name. UUIDs are used to identify COM interfaces and, as we discovered in chapter one, Silverlight for Windows Embedded is based on COM or, at least, provides a COM-like Application Programming Interface (API).
Here’s
the declaration of
the DirectoryItem interface:
class __declspec(novtable,uuid("{D38C66E5-2725-4111-B422-D75B32AA8702}")) IDirectoryItem : public IXRCustomUserControl
{
public:
virtual HRESULT SetFullPath(BSTR fullpath) = 0;
virtual HRESULT GetFullPath(BSTR* retval) = 0;
};
The interface is derived from IXRCustomControl, this will allow us to add our object to a XAML tree.
It declares
the two functions needed to set and get
the full path, but don’t implement them. Implementation will be done inside
the control class.
The interface only defines
the functions of our control class that are accessible from
the outside. It’s a sort of “contract” between our control and
the applications that will use it. We must support what’s inside
the contract and
the application code should know nothing else about our own control.
To reference our interface we will use
the UUID, to make code more readable we can declare a #define in this way:
#define IID_IDirectoryItem __uuidof(IDirectoryItem)
Silverlight for Windows Embedded objects (like COM objects) use a reference counting mechanism to handle object destruction. Every time you store a pointer to an object you should call its AddRef function and every time you no longer need that pointer you should call Release.
The object keeps an internal counter, incremented for each AddRef and decremented on Release. When
the counter reaches 0,
the object is destroyed.
Managing reference counting in our code can be quite complicated and, since we are
lazy (I am, at least!), we will use a great feature of Silverlight for Windows Embedded: smart pointers.A smart pointer can be connected to a Silverlight for Windows Embedded object and manages its reference counting.
To declare a smart pointer we must use
the XRPtr template:
typedef XRPtr<IDirectoryItem> IDirectoryItemPtr;
Now that we have defined our interface, it’s time to implement our user control class.
XAML2CPP has implemented a class for us, and we have only to derive our class from it, defining
the main class and interface of our new custom control:
class DirectoryItem : public DirectoryItemUserControlRegister<DirectoryItem,IDirectoryItem>
{
...
}
XAML2CPP has generated some code for us to support
the user control, we don’t have to mind too much about that code, since it will be generated (or written by hand, if you like) always in
the same way, for every user control. But knowing how does this works “under
the hood” is still useful to understand
the architecture of Silverlight for Windows Embedded.
Our base class declaration is a bit more complex than
the one we used for a simple page in
the previous chapters:
template <class A,class B>
class DirectoryItemUserControlRegister : public XRCustomUserControlImpl<A,B>,public TDirectoryItem<A,XAML2CPPUserControl>
{
...
}
This class derives from
the XAML2CPP generated template class, like
the ListPage class, but it uses XAML2CPPUserControl for
the implementation of some features. This class shares
the same ancestor of XAML2CPPPage (base class for “regular” XAML pages), XAML2CPPBase, implements binding of member variables and event handlers but, instead of loading and creating its own XAML tree, it attaches to an existing one.
The XAML tree (and UI) of our custom control is created and loaded by
the XRCustomUserControlImpl class. This class is part of
the Silverlight for Windows Embedded framework and implements most of
the functions needed to build-up a custom control in Silverlight (the guys that developed Silverlight for Windows Embedded seem to care about
lazy programmers!). We have just to initialize it, providing our class (DirectoryItem) and interface (IDirectoryItem).
Our user control class has also a static member:
protected:
static HINSTANCE hInstance;
This is used to store
the HINSTANCE of
the modules that contain our user control class. I don’t like this implementation, but I can’t find a better one, so if somebody has good ideas about how to handle
the HINSTANCE object, I’ll be happy to hear suggestions!
It also implements two static members required by XRCustomUserControlImpl.
The first one is used to load
the XAML UI of our custom control:
static HRESULT GetXamlSource(XRXamlSource* pXamlSource)
{
pXamlSource->SetResource(hInstance,TEXT("XAML"),IDR_XAML_DirectoryItem);
return S_OK;
}
It initializes a XRXamlSource object, connecting it to
the XAML resource that XAML2CPP has included in our resource script.
The other method is used to register our custom control, allowing Silverlight for Windows Embedded to create it when it load some XAML or when an application creates a new control at runtime (more about this later):
static HRESULT Register()
{
return XRCustomUserControlImpl<A,B>::Register(__uuidof(B), L"DirectoryItem", L"clr-namespace:DirectoryItemNamespace");
}
To register our control we should provide its interface UUID,
the name of
the corresponding element in
the XAML tree and its current namespace (namespaces compatible with Silverlight must use
the “clr-namespace” prefix.
We may also register additional properties for our objects, allowing them to be loaded and saved inside XAML. In this case we have no permanent properties and
the Register method will just register our control.
An additional static method is implemented to allow easy registration of our custom control inside our application WinMain function:
static HRESULT RegisterUserControl(HINSTANCE hInstance)
{
DirectoryItemUserControlRegister::hInstance=hInstance;
return DirectoryItemUserControlRegister<A,B>::Register();
}
Now our control is registered and we will be able to create it using
the Silverlight for Windows Embedded runtime functions.
But we need to bind our members and event handlers to have them available like we are used to do for other XAML2CPP generated objects. To bind events and members we need to implement
the On_Loaded function:
virtual HRESULT OnLoaded(__in IXRDependencyObject* pRoot)
{
HRESULT retcode;
IXRApplicationPtr app;
if (FAILED(retcode=GetXRApplicationInstance(&app)))
return retcode;
return ((A*)this)->Init(pRoot,hInstance,app);
}
This function will call
the XAML2CPPUserControl::Init member that will connect
the “root” member with
the XAML sub tree that has been created for our control and then calls BindObjects and BindEvents to bind members and events to our code.
Now we can go back to our application code (the code that you’ll have to actually write) to see
the contents of our DirectoryItem class:
class DirectoryItem : public DirectoryItemUserControlRegister<DirectoryItem,IDirectoryItem>
{
protected:
WCHAR fullpath[_MAX_PATH+1];
public:
DirectoryItem()
{
*fullpath=0;
}
virtual HRESULT SetFullPath(BSTR fullpath)
{
wcscpy_s(this->fullpath,fullpath);
WCHAR* p=fullpath;
for(WCHAR*q=wcsstr(p,L"\\");q;p=q+1,q=wcsstr(p,L"\\"))
;
Name->SetText(p);
return S_OK;
}
virtual HRESULT GetFullPath(BSTR* retval)
{
*retval=SysAllocString(fullpath);
return S_OK;
}
};
It’s pretty easy and contains a fullpath member (used to store that path of
the directory connected with
the user control) and
the implementation of
the two interface members that can be used to set and retrieve
the path.
The SetFullPath member parses
the full path and displays just
the last branch directory name inside
the “Name” TextBlock object.
As you can see, implementing a user control in Silverlight for Windows Embedded is not too complex and using XAML also for
the UI of
the control allows us to re-use
the same mechanisms that we learnt and used in
the previous steps of our tutorial.
Now let’s see how
the main page is managed by
the ListPage class.
class ListPage : public TListPage<ListPage>
{
protected:
// current path
TCHAR curpath[_MAX_PATH+1];
It has a member named “curpath” that is used to store
the current directory.
It’s initialized inside
the constructor:
ListPage()
{
*curpath=0;
}
And it’s value is displayed inside
the “CurrentDir” TextBlock inside
the initialization function:
virtual HRESULT Init(HINSTANCE hInstance,IXRApplication* app)
{
HRESULT retcode;
if (FAILED(retcode=TListPage<ListPage>::Init(hInstance,app)))
return retcode;
CurrentDir->SetText(L"\\");
return S_OK;
}
The FillFileList function is used to enumerate subdirectories of
the current dir and add entries for each one inside
the list box that fills most of
the client area of our main page:
HRESULT FillFileList()
{
HRESULT retcode;
IXRItemCollectionPtr items;
IXRApplicationPtr app;
if (FAILED(retcode=GetXRApplicationInstance(&app)))
return retcode;
// retrieves
the items contained in
the listbox
if (FAILED(retcode=FileList->GetItems(&items)))
return retcode;
// clears
the list
if (FAILED(retcode=items->Clear()))
return retcode;
// enumerates files and directory in
the current path
WCHAR filemask[_MAX_PATH+1];
wcscpy_s(filemask,curpath);
wcscat_s(filemask,L"\\*.*");
WIN32_FIND_DATA finddata;
HANDLE findhandle;
findhandle=FindFirstFile(filemask,&finddata);
//
the directory is empty?
if (findhandle==INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE)
return S_OK;
do
{
if (finddata.dwFileAttributes&=FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY)
{
IXRListBoxItemPtr listboxitem;
// add a new item to
the listbox
if (FAILED(retcode=app->CreateObject(IID_IXRListBoxItem,&listboxitem)))
{
FindClose(findhandle);
return retcode;
}
if (FAILED(retcode=items->Add(listboxitem,NULL)))
{
FindClose(findhandle);
return retcode;
}
IDirectoryItemPtr directoryitem;
if (FAILED(retcode=app->CreateObject(IID_IDirectoryItem,&directoryitem)))
{
FindClose(findhandle);
return retcode;
}
WCHAR fullpath[_MAX_PATH+1];
wcscpy_s(fullpath,curpath);
wcscat_s(fullpath,L"\\");
wcscat_s(fullpath,finddata.cFileName);
if (FAILED(retcode=directoryitem->SetFullPath(fullpath)))
{
FindClose(findhandle);
return retcode;
}
XAML2CPPXRValue value((IXRDependencyObject*)directoryitem);
if (FAILED(retcode=listboxitem->SetContent(&value)))
{
FindClose(findhandle);
return retcode;
}
}
}
while (FindNextFile(findhandle,&finddata));
FindClose(findhandle);
return S_OK;
}
This functions retrieve a pointer to
the collection of
the items contained in
the directory listbox.
The IXRItemCollection interface is used by listboxes and comboboxes and allow you to clear
the list (using Clear(), as our function does at
the beginning) and change its contents by adding and removing elements.
This function uses
the FindFirstFile/FindNextFile functions to enumerate all
the objects inside our current directory and for each subdirectory creates a IXRListBoxItem object. You can insert any kind of control inside a list box, you don’t need a IXRListBoxItem, but using it will allow you to handle
the selected state of an item, highlighting it inside
the list.
The function creates a list box item using
the CreateObject function of XRApplication.
The same function is then used to create an instance of our custom control.
The function returns a pointer to
the control IDirectoryItem interface and we can use it to store
the directory full path inside
the object and add it as content of
the IXRListBox item object, adding it to
the listbox contents.
The listbox generates an event (SelectionChanged) each time
the user clicks on one of
the items contained in
the listbox.
We implement an event handler for that event and use it to change our current directory and repopulate
the listbox.
The current directory full path will be displayed in
the TextBlock:
HRESULT Filelist_SelectionChanged(IXRDependencyObject* source,XRSelectionChangedEventArgs* args)
{
HRESULT retcode;
IXRListBoxItemPtr listboxitem;
if (!args->pAddedItem)
return S_OK;
if (FAILED(retcode=args->pAddedItem->QueryInterface(IID_IXRListBoxItem,(void**)&listboxitem)))
return retcode;
XRValue content;
if (FAILED(retcode=listboxitem->GetContent(&content)))
return retcode;
if (content.vType!=VTYPE_OBJECT)
return E_FAIL;
IDirectoryItemPtr directoryitem;
if (FAILED(retcode=content.pObjectVal->QueryInterface(IID_IDirectoryItem,(void**)&directoryitem)))
return retcode;
content.pObjectVal->Release();
content.pObjectVal=NULL;
BSTR fullpath=NULL;
if (FAILED(retcode=directoryitem->GetFullPath(&fullpath)))
return retcode;
CurrentDir->SetText(fullpath);
wcscpy_s(curpath,fullpath);
FillFileList();
SysFreeString(fullpath);
return S_OK;
}
};
The function uses
the pAddedItem member of
the XRSelectionChangedEventArgs object to retrieve
the currently selected item, converts it to a IXRListBoxItem interface using QueryInterface, and then retrives its contents (IDirectoryItem object). Using
the GetFullPath method we can get
the full path of our selected directory and assing it to
the curdir member. A call to FillFileList will update
the listbox contents, displaying
the list of subdirectories of
the selected folder.
To build our sample we just need to add code to our WinMain function:
int WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance,
HINSTANCE hPrevInstance,
LPTSTR lpCmdLine,
int nCmdShow)
{
if (!XamlRuntimeInitialize())
return -1;
HRESULT retcode;
IXRApplicationPtr app;
if (FAILED(retcode=GetXRApplicationInstance(&app)))
return -1;
if (FAILED(retcode=DirectoryItem::RegisterUserControl(hInstance)))
return retcode;
ListPage page;
if (FAILED(page.Init(hInstance,app)))
return -1;
page.FillFileList();
UINT exitcode;
if (FAILED(page.GetVisualHost()->StartDialog(&exitcode)))
return -1;
return 0;
}
This code is very similar to
the one of
the WinMains of our previous samples.
The main differences are that we register our custom control (you should do that as soon as you have initialized
the XAML runtime) and call FillFileList after
the initialization of our ListPage object to load
the contents of
the root folder of our device inside
the listbox.
As usual you can download
the full sample source code from here:
http://cid-9b7b0aefe3514dc5.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/ListBoxTest.zip
