Silverlight recursivly bind Treeview to XDocument

Question

How can I recursivly bind a Treeview to an XDocument, mapping each XML Element to a Node in the Treeview?

The code below should work from my perspective (and also according to the very few posts I found regarding direct binding), however it does not:

<sdk:TreeView ItemsSource="{Binding Path=Elements}" DataContext="{Binding Path=Data}">
  <sdk:TreeView.ItemTemplate>
   <data:HierarchicalDataTemplate ItemsSource="{Binding Path=Elements}">
    <StackPanel Orientation="Vertical">
     <TextBlock Text="{Binding Name}"/>
    </StackPanel>
   </data:HierarchicalDataTemplate>
  </sdk:TreeView.ItemTemplate>
</sdk:Treeview>

(Data is a Property of type XElement on the parents' DataContext)

Did I make a mistake somewhere or do I really need to implement an IValueConverter just to get at the child elements of an XElement?

Answer 1

The "Elements" member is not a Property, It's a Method call.
You cannot bind to method calls in Silverlight.

If you're really bent on getting this scenario to work you've got 2 options I can see:
1. Use an IValueConverter to extract the contents of the "Elements" method.
2. Wrap the XDocument in managed classes in a proper hierarchy.

Personally, While option #1 seems the fastest, I believe that in the long run it'll cost you more time to maintain and support then spending an additional 10 minutes building a proper domain model.

Sincerely,
-- Justin Angel