WPF. How do I create many LIstViews with the same look.

Question

I've defined a listview in my recent project and realized that I will be using more listviews looking exactly the same and having the same solumns. Since I'm new to WPF am I curious of teh best way to do this. Is it to create a usercontrol? Use styles? I've tried to use styles but it didnt work the way I was hoping. I tried to set the "View" property using style, like this.

<Style x:Key="ListViewStyle" TargetType="{x:Type ListView}">
    <Setter Property="View">
        <ListView.View>
            <GridView>

But it didnt work so I'm asking for your opinion?! Thanks.

Answer 1

Yes you should go ahead and put the common properties into a Style and link to it from all the similar controls...

The issue I see from your brief code-snippet is that you don't need the ListView.List element (the A.B XAML Syntax means that you're setting the B property on A.)

<Style ...
  <Setter Property="PropertyName">
     <ValueObj/>
  </Setter>
  <Setter Property="View">
     <GridView ... />
  </Setter>
</Style>

Answer 2

You're missing the Setter.Value tag, and you don't need the ListView.View tag :

<Style x:Key="ListViewStyle" TargetType="{x:Type ListView}">
    <Setter Property="View">
        <Setter.Value>
            <GridView>

Answer 3

Another possibility that hasn't been discussed: you can define the ListView in a DataTemplate, and use that DataTemplate to display the various collections you'll be showing. For instance, if your items collections are all of type MyCollectionType, you can do this:

<DataTemplate DataType="myNamespace:MyCollectionType">
    <ListView ItemsSource="{Binding Items}">
      <!-- define everything here -->
    </ListView>
</DataTemplate>

...

<StackPanel>
   <ContentControl Content="{Binding OneCollection}"/>    
   <ContentControl Content="{Binding AnotherCollection"/>
</StackPanel>

and the OneCollection and AnotherCollection properties in your view model will both be rendered as ListView controls with the same layout.