Resources in WPF

Anil Veeragandham

WPFResources in WPFWPF ResourcesStatic Resource in WPF

7 Comments

Join the conversation! Your thoughts help the community grow.

Ammar Shaukat11y ago
Very easy simple and helping . Thanks. Anil..
Vijay Dahite14y ago
Very Nice Article Anil....
Kieran Callaghan15y ago
This article has helped me understand the difference between static and dynamic resources. From what I understand you are saying static resoused Is mostly used at load time and dynamic are better suited during runtime of our applications. Can you recommend further arlicals on the subject? Kind regards, kieran
syed ahmed15y agoedited
Hi Anil, This is a good article about Resources....... I am a Beginner this article helped in understanding the Resources...
Raj Kumar15y ago
easy to understand the concept of resources. keep up the good work.
Mahesh Chand16y ago
Good work Anil. Simple and easy to understand.
scott anderson17y ago
Nice articile, this helped me alot to know about the concept of resources in WPF. Expecting many more helpful articles from you. Regards, Nagesh.

Resources in WPF

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) resources provide a simple way to reuse commonly defined objects and values. Resources in WPF allow you to set the properties of multiple controls at a time. For example you can set the background property on several elements in a WPF application using a single resource.

The best way of defining the resources is on a Window or Page element level. Any resource that you define for an element also applies to their child elements of that element. For example if you define a resource for a Window element that has a Grid as a child element, then the resources defined for the window elements can also be used by the grid element. However, if you define a resource for the grid element, then the resource applies only to the child elements of the grid element.

Syntax for resources in WPF as follows

<!-Content -->

</elementName>

elementName: Name of the element that uses the resource

propertyName: Name of the property that takes its value from the resource

markupExtension: Define type of resource

keyName: key name of the resource, which is unique string to identify the resource

There are two types of resource, namely

Static Resource
Dynamic Resource

Let's see basics of both resources

Static Resource

We should use the StaticResource markup extension to define the resource as a static resource. The value of StaticResource is determined at the time of loading.

Let's have a sample program, Add the below code snippet in Window1.xaml file inside the Grid

<Grid.Resources>
<SolidColorBrush x:Key="lblbgcolor" Color="Blue"/>
</Grid.Resources>
<Label Name="lbl" Margin="71,44,77,0" Background="{StaticResource lblbgcolor}" Height="49" />

Above code, Grid control uses the Resources property (<Grid.Resources>) to define resource. SolidColorBrush resource named lblbgcolor defined. lblbgcolor resource is used to set the background property of lable.

Dynamic Resource

Dynamic Resource we use in a situation where we want to change the value of property at run time.

Let's have a sample program, Add the below code snippet in Window1.xaml file inside the Window element>

<Window.Resources>
<SolidColorBrush x:Key="brush" Color="Red" />
</Window.Resources>
<Button x:Name="btn" Content="Click Me" Click="Button_Click" Background="{DynamicResource brush}" Height="100" Width="100" />

Open Code behind and add the following code snippet

private void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
this.btn.SetResourceReference(BackgroundProperty, "brush");
}

Above code, Window control uses the Resources property (<Window.Resources>) to define resource. SolidColorBrush resource named brush defined. brush resource is used to set the background property of button.

Conclusion

I have covered basics of resources in WPF. I hope this will helps all the beginners to startup.

Reference

Dreamtech: WPF in simple steps