Buttons in a view triggering a method in code behind - clicked vs command - SIMPLE info for new people!

[antonycartwright]

Hi everyone,

I just thought I'd post this for anyone else who is about to struggle!

Sometimes, you need a really simple and quick fix to something rather than going around the houses for hours!

In my case, I have a collectionview with a grid. The collectionview is bound by the code behind rather than in the XAML (I prefer this approach because I think it's more flexible). Each item in the template has a button that I added, and the idea of the button is that it determines the item's bound object in the item/row, and then navigates to an edit page.

I'd done research and ICommand was suggested, mostly for the ability to pass a parameter. Basically you add a command, you add the command attribute for the control, and the command parameter. You think it's going to be easy like Command="YourMethod" (referring to a method in the code behind. It doesn't work like that.

You have to mess around with awful text like Command = "{Binding Command="", Path=""}", blah blah blah... It wants you to bind to a VM... It's confusing in general with finicky syntax. You don't have to do all that crap! Don't waste hours like I did with this ridiculous problem.

The solution is very simple! Just use the easy "clicked" event. Sure, you can;t pass a parameter, but you can attain it from the underlying item as shown below.

<Button Grid.Column="3" Text="Edit" Clicked="Button_Clicked"/>

The code behind is extremely simple:

    private void Button_Clicked(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        YourType yt = (YourType)((Button)sender).BindingContext));
        //Get the clicked button reference, get it's binding context and cast it as your type! job done!
    }

Don't waste ages like I did... Don't bother with that Command thing - it's overly complicated!

Antony