Multiple ListBoxes binding their SelectedItem to the same property in ViewModel - better way?

Question

I have a WPF listview, and in one column the cell may contain one or more ListBoxes.

When I right-click a ListBox I'm building a context menu where each item has a DelegateCommand. Currently I'm setting the command parameter to a SelectedListBox property on the page viewmodel itself as my delegate command needs to know which ListBox has been right-clicked.

However this is leading to weird behaviour, which I'm assuming is because I'm binding multiple ListBoxes to the same page-level property (SelectedListBox).

The relevant XAML for the cell template for the listview is as follows:

<DataTemplate x:Key="MultipleListBoxCellTemplate">
    <ListBox SelectedItem="{Binding Path=DataContext.SelectedListBox, RelativeSource={RelativeSource FindAncestor, AncestorType={x:Type Page}}}" />
</DataTemplate>

Is there a better way to get which ListBox has been right-clicked to my viewmodel, or can anyone think of another approach? Much appreciated :)

Answer 1

When you are building the context menu, you know which list box was selected, yes? I would probably wrap that up in the ICommand you are binding the context item to. This way, each command knows exactly which ListBox it was created by and can get the selected item from there.

Alternately, you may be able to get around the issue with using SelectedItem by changing your binding to OneWayToSource so that the data only flows from the View back to the ViewModel. You may still have timing issues, which I suspect is your current problem, but depending on exactly what is going on, that may resolve it.