How to bind to a property of a property in WPF

Question

I have a listview who's itemssource is a ObservableCollection of MyModel. I am trying to figure how to bind a textbox text's property to the Name property of the model's Owner property

public class Person
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Address { get; set; }
    //...
}

public class MyModel
{
    public string Title { get; set; }
    public Person Owner { get; set; }
    //...
}

I tried:

<TextBlock Text="{Binding Owner.Name}" /> 

but that leaves the textblock blank. Whats the proper syntax?

Answer 1

Check that the DataContext is set properly and implement INotifyPropertyChanged (raise the event it defines when the value of the property changes.).

Answer 2

The binding looks fine. I assume that you put the TextBlock into a DataTemplate and attached this to the ListView. If yes, that should work.

To find the error, replace the Binding through a literal to see if you have some rows (The literal must be shown in every line). If not, check the ItemsSource. If yes, check that you have really a Person-object attached to your MyModel-instances and that the Name-property is not null or empty. Check also the output window of VS. There you will see binding-errormessages.

If you have no DataTemplate, here an example:

 <ListView ItemsSource="[Your ItemsSource]">
    <ListView.ItemTemplate>                
        <DataTemplate>
            <Grid>
                <TextBlock Text="{Binding Owner.Name}"/>
            </Grid>                    
        </DataTemplate>                
    </ListView.ItemTemplate>                                    
 </ListView>

Answer 3

Try to use Data Source Wizard form VS 2010 I just add these classes and click, clik, clik

<TextBox Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="0" Height="23" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="3" Name="nameTextBox" Text="{Binding Path=Owner.Name, Mode=TwoWay, ValidatesOnExceptions=true, NotifyOnValidationError=true}" VerticalAlignment="Center" Width="120" />