hozuki / WinFormsCommanding

WPF-ish command pattern for Windows Forms

Simple Commanding for Windows Forms

This repository introduces command pattern similar to WPF into Windows Forms.

Why?

WPF has its implementation of command pattern, which is a powerful way to manage program logic. However, due to design decisions, Windows Forms does not naturally support this. There are projects like Prism reimplemented it for WPF-ish environments. Some commercial libraries have their own implementation, for example WinForms MVVM of DevExpress. But still, there is no general, open-sourced version for Windows Forms. Therefore, here I introduce a WPF-like commanding for Windows Forms.

Functionalities

• ICommand, CommandBinding and ICommandSource similar to what they are in WPF.
• Basic command types: DelegateCommand, RoutedCommand (limited) and RoutedUICommand (limited).
• Operations: execute, revert
• Usability management
• RoutedUICommand can bind to common controls:
  • Button, CheckBox, RadioButton
  • MenuItem
  • ToolStripButton, ToolStripSplitButton, ToolStripOverflowButton
  • ToolStripMenuItem

Example

There is example can be found at Form1.cs. Here is a glance of a part of it:

private void InitializeCommands() {
    var binding = new CommandBinding(_command1);

    binding.Executed += (s, e) => {
        var paramStr = e.Parameter == null ? "(null)" : e.Parameter.ToString();
        MessageBox.Show($"This is command 1.{Environment.NewLine}Command parameter: {paramStr}");
    };

    binding.QueryCanExecute += (s, e) => {
        e.CanExecute = _command1Enabled;
    };

    btnInvoke1.CreateCommandSourceBuilder().WithCommandBinding(binding).Build();
    btnInvoke1Param.CreateCommandSourceBuilder().WithCommandBinding(binding).WithCommandParameter(1234).Build();
    mnuFileInvoke1.CreateCommandSourceBuilder().WithCommandBinding(binding).Build();
}

private readonly ICommand _command1 = new RoutedUICommand("Ctrl+1");
private bool _command1Enabled = true;

License

MIT