Best practice for forwarding ItemsSource

Question

I have a UserControl that contains - among other things - a ListView. The ListView has a different data context than the UserControl (this data context is not exposed). If someone consumes my control, I would like them to be able to (indirectly) bind to the ListView's ItemsSource dependency property. It should really feel like the user is binding to a typical ItemsSource.

I'm not sure what the best way to proceed is. Looking at how ItemsControl's ItemsSource property worked in Reflector showed some logic that seemed a bit more involved than ought to be necessary for simple forwarding.

My current best idea is to expose a collection as a dependency property on the outer control and, when it is updated, update the ListView's ItemsSource. But I'm not sure what type this collection should be (should I require an ObservableCollection<T>, for example), or if there are any gotchas I should look out for.

Any suggestions or advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Use AddOwner to add your UserControl as an owner of the ItemsControl.ItemsSourceProperty. In the new property meta data, give a property changed callback that sets the ItemsSource of your ListView.