MVVM: Tutorial from start to finish?

Question

I'm a C#/Windows Forms programmer with more than 5 years experience. I've been investigating WPF using the MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) design pattern. I have searched the Internet for tutorials. I have even watched the entirety of Jason Dolinger's awesome video. Although I have found many, I have not found one that takes me from start to finish. What I really want is a tutorial that doesn't assume any previous WPF knowledge.

What are your favorite WPF-MVVM tutorials that helped you to learn?

Answer 1

This isn't a tutorial, but it's the diagram on this page that helped me get my head around mvvm.

Answer 2

Some blogs/websites to check out:

• Josh Smith
• Dr. WPF
• Bea Stollnitz

Currently, Josh Smith has a "From Russia With Love" article that can be of some use to you.

Answer 3

A while ago I was in a similar situation (allthough I had a little wpf knowledge already), so I started a community wiki. There are a lot of great ressources there:

What applications could I study to understand (Data)Model-View-ViewModel?

Answer 4

I was in exactly the same situation recently, mate, and I can tell you what I did.

Josh Smith "WPF Apps With The Model-View-ViewModel Design Pattern" read again, again and again :-) download the code, examine, compile and keep it around

MVVM foundation

1. Examine the framework, use it in your app.
2. Look at the Demo application in that framework.

No real start-to-finish tutorials, sorry...

Answer 5

The WPF Application Framework (WAF) provides some extensive WPF MVVM sample applications. They might help to learn good WPF programming.

Answer 6

My blog has a complete series of tutorial starting from scratch for WPF MVVM and WPF Prism. Have a look here: http://blog.raffaeu.com/archive/2009/06/03/wpf-and-vmmv-tutorial-01-introduction.aspx

Answer 7

Your question really seems to be asking 2 questions:

1. Where are some good tutorials on WPF, assuming I have no previous WPF experience?
2. Where are some good tutorials on learning MVVM?

Some of these resources may be duplicated in previous answers...

Tutorials on WPF

• A Guided Tour of WPF by Josh Smith

  I wrote a series of introductory WPF articles on The Code Project. The goal of those articles is to bring someone with no WPF experience up-to-speed enough so that (s)he can fully understand how the series’ demo application works.

• Bea Stollnitz (link is to her archives) has a number of great articles on WPF.

• WPF: A Beginner's Guide - Part 1 of n by Sacha Barber

• WindowsClient.net WPF Training Videos

MVVM Tutorials

• WPF Apps With The Model-View-ViewModel Design Pattern by Josh Smith (duplicate link already provided by Yacoder)

• Jason Dolinger's presentation on the Model-View-ViewModel (link to video embedded in article)

• Dan Crevier's DataModel-View-ViewModel pattern series (similar to MVVM)

Composite WPF (Prism) Resources
Though not exactly what you asked, it is the natural progression with WPF and MVVM.

• Composite WPF (Prism) on Codeplex

• Silver Bay Labs has a number of great videos on learning Prism

• 10 step-by-step videos on using Silverlight and Prism (Channel9)

Answer 8

I read Josh Smith's article and found it very difficult. Once understood, I wrote a very simple one that should get you really started on it. Get it here: http://codingtales.com/2010/01/12/getting-started-with-mvvm-in-wpf/

Answer 9

I really liked these articles:

1. MVVM for Tarded Folks Like Me
2. How Tards Like Me Make MVVM Apps

He really dumbs down the concept in a humorous way. Worth reading.

Answer 10

I found http://windowsclient.net/learn/videos_wpf.aspx as a good start

Answer 11

There's a very good Techdays 2010 video introduction to the MVVM pattern, clearly explained:

• TechDays 2010: Understanding the Model-View-ViewModel pattern

Answer 12

This one will do:

RIATasks: A Simple Silverlight CRUD Example

Answer 13

Reed Copsey published a nice tutorial that writes a trivial RSS app in WinForms, then makes a straight port to WPF, and finally converts to MVVM. It makes a nice introduction to MVVM before you try and tackle a full description like Josh Smith's article. I'm glad that I read Reed's tutorial before Josh's article, because it gives me a little context to understand the details that Josh is digging into.

Answer 14

For something released a little more recently (last month), take a look at Rainer Stropek's video series MVVM in WPF and Silverlight

He flies right through it, but does an extremely good job of going from start to finish with an actual application.