I can't begin to express my gratitude for being able to watch this video. I've been trying to apply MVVM in my own WPF app and struggling mightily (lot of repetitive code) up to a few months ago when I discovered RelayCommand which greatly improved things. I'm still bummed out by not being able to even preview (let alone design) DataTemplates in cider. Or maybe I'm doing something wrong...

Anyway I'm up to a point where I'm comfortably using DataTemplates and RelayCommands but the things you showed in your video were just mindblowing ! I especially like the Co-routine stuff, just a bummer that we're a VB.NET shop and I can't use that stuff without writing part of my code in C#.

I have a point of criticism though, I hope you don't take it too personally. I don't know you personally so it may just be your style but I really felt at times you weren't very keen on being there (on stage that is). Or maybe I'm biased from watching some of the other sessions where the speakers seem to be high-on diet-coke or something...

Anyway, apart from that, easily the most interesting session so far at mix ! 5/5 !

Sven

MVVM: Going it alone

I watched the whole thing and all I can say is Amazing!! really. Good job.

What I loved most is the composability of the UI where the work is distributed on small objects rather than a big script that coordinates the UI behavior. And with the way and style you did it is stunningly clean.

I also loved Coroutines. I actually discovered this not a long ago and started using to return IDisposable types  so that the calling code doesn't have to worry about disposing them itself. Of course you took it much further with asynchronous calls. I think this feature is much under utilized in C# while continuations  are a natural part of other languages. I thought of writing a blog post about it but I don't have a blog! may be you can.

The only thing that worried me a bit is maybe the over use of conventions (you mentioned it 42 times). Don't you think this can create black boxes and hurt maintainability?

Again Amazing.. thanks.

I really dug your talk yesterday - thanks for posting the code.

Your convention over config style brings memories of Jeremy Miller, Build-Your-Own-Cab, and Opinionated-MVC (FubuMVC).  I love it.

The part of this (and other architectures I've seen) that feels weird is what I'd call "too MEF'ed".  I read somewhere from Glen that MEF is for managing unknown dependencies where IOC containers are for managing known dependencies.  That resonated well with me.  Most of the time, I think of many of these V->VM->M are known dependencies.  It seems more straightforward to me to let my IOC manage this wireup.   Bbut in my experience it's hard to use just a little bit of MEF.  For me it tends to quickly turn into an all-or-nothing thing where my IOC and MEF are fighting each other.  Then any simplicity I gain it replaced with complexity of having two containers managing object construction and lifetime.  Anyway... tangent.

Loved the talk and thanks again

-kelly

Rob:

This was easily my 2nd favorite session behind "Prototyping Rich Silverlight Applications w/ SketchFlow."  You have a talent not only for writing seriously awesome code, but also for public speaking as well.  Bravo.

Great talk. Shows how adopting conventions and a little bit of code (~500 lines) can help you sweep your application XAML  and  code-behind house clean of repeative gunk. Increase coding speed and testability while by-passing the drag-and-drop binding exercise completely.

A terrific foundation for grasping Caliburn if that's where you want to go.

I'm telling everyone I know to look at this talk.

It's a great presentation! Can't say enough about it, and hope to see more of your talk in the future!

Caliburn eh?  definitely checking it out!

This session was one of my favorites at Mix 10. Pretty advanced stuff but I like that. Your solutions are very clean and smart. I've always found Caliburn a bit hard to get a grip on because of its size. This talk really explained a lot of details in a great way and helps immensely when trying to decide whether to actually use Caliburn or just implement a few features ourselves to suit our project. Thanks!

Great presentation! Totally eliminated to any barriers I'd initially had towards embracing Caliburn.

I especially liked the part about coroutines - simply beautiful!

One smll problem though - the attachced zip file containing the samples from the presentation seems to be corrupt.

I'm a big proponent of the whole Convention over configuration idea. I give up some meticulous control

I second Kelly and prefer to use MEF to load unknown dependencies like plugins, extensions, etc. But anyway, your session is one of my favorites on MIX10. Thanks a lot for you hard work!

Excellent talk.   Your delivery and content were spot on.  I really appreciate the fact that your sample was feature rich enough to illustrate the points without being overwhelming in details.

Thank you very much for sharing your ideas and your code. Having a strong NET 2.0 background and writing on top of 10+ years old software stacks I see myself facing a steep learning curve ahead. With that experience I would do anything to move away from the old Ueberclass with static methods. I knew there exists something like an MVC/MVP pattern in the new GUI world, but I never really got myself involved until now. With touchscreens becoming a commodity nowadays we are re-basing our products, high precision medical device machinery, and want to welcome scientists with more intuitive user experiences.

Thanks again for your hard work!

I was like oh, another MVVM video but why not watch it while i clean up.  Definately a decision which gave me a fresh look at mvvm.

What  license are you releasing the code under? MIT?

I just watched this talk on the video. Thanks so much for putting this together, it was great fun.

The problem of avoiding async code can be solved a couple of ways. My question is whether you explored System.Reactive and found it coming up short (in which case I'd love to know why) or whether you hadn't tried it in  place of the co-routies. In certian aspects it would be simpler. Perhaps not in other aspects.

Thanks for posting... great thought food.

My first reaction to encoding conventions like that was 'eewwww'. There has to be a better way... but you know I've been thinking about it for 2 days and still haven't come up with one.

What I really want to be able to do is register my Views directly into some kind of view manager using Xaml and tag them up with the ViewModel they relate to.

Assumptions:

A view is always written with a specific viewmodel in mind.

A new ui should be buildable without touching the viewmodels.

I don't want to have to rely on conventions like this.

I don't want to hard code a list of all the mappings.

Buggered if I can find a solution though.

What would be ideal would be:

[UserControl cst:MapsToModel="SomeViewModel"]

[/UserControl]

But... yeah...

So for now it looks like convention is the way to go :(

@Kathleen Reactive wasn't around (or at least wasn't well known) when the "coroutines" were added to Caliburn. Also, Rx has a different focus (events) from what was needed for Caliburn.  

My take on the ViewModelLocator pattern for MVVM

Hi, I've done a write-up of the co-routine trick with a couple of possible variations.  I hope you like it.

Julian

www.colourcoding.net/.../rob-eisenbergs-co-routine-trick-in-retlang.aspx

Awesome piece of work! Rob, what should be the minimum changes in the framework to work with a WPF app instead of Silverlight.

What an excellent Mix video! Great sample MVVM framework, clearly explained and demonstrated. Thanks - it's given me a great number of ideas to try out.

Thanks again.

Just when i think i have a grasp if MVVM i come across something new that simply blows my mind. I am ever grateful for having come across your video. It has surely peaked my interest that much more. It was also reassuring when i saw you using concepts that I have adopted. At least I know I'm on the right track.

I can't get the sample to build. Do I need to install Unity or MEF first?

'System.ComponentModel.Composition.Hosting.CompositionHost' does not contain a definition for 'Initialize'  IoC.cs               line 12

'System.Windows.Window' does not contain a definition for 'Closing' and no extension method 'Closing' accepting a first argument of type 'System.Windows.Window' could be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)               App.xaml.cs line 25

For my build issue above...Yes, I have it working now.

I did need the RC of VS 2010. I also installed the Silverlight 4 latest and the latest Silverlight toolkit.

Thanks.

Continuing the theme of conventions in code; I talked about validating the conventions, but I didn't

Looking at the code I can't figure out how the ShellView transitioningContentControl gets the view model "ActiveScreen" property (in ScreenConductor) bound to a property of the control called View.ModelProperty. The XAML is

               <tl:TransitioningContentControl x:Name="ActiveScreen"

                     Transition="UpTransition"

                      Margin="40"/>

But, where is the attached propertyView.Model on it?

How does this line in the ViewModelBinder works?

               if(((FrameworkElement)foundControl).GetBindingExpression(boundProperty) != null)

                   continue;

Since the TransitioningContentControl does not contain this attached property.

It would seem you would have to have done the following to have it available.

              <tl:TransitioningContentControl x:Name="ActiveScreen"

                    Transition="UpTransition"

                     Margin="40"

vm:View.Model=\"{Binding}\"/>

Great talk!

During it you mentioned you had an idea for how to maintain 'blendability' when using conventions such as these. I was just wondering what you were planning ? :)

One objection to MVVM I often hear is that it doesn't manage transactions well. I'm not talking about

Convention-based programming is an interesting model. In essence, it attempts to reduce the potential

Hey Rob, nice work man!  Definitely some code kung foo!

Say, like a few others, I'm concerned about this approach when it comes to plugins. I'm currently using a "glenn block" approach with MEF and DeploymentCatalog to add/remove Xaps.  I have found this mechanism to work quite well. That said, if I could couple that with your convention (and other) designs I could have the best of both worlds that would make plugin development quick and easy.

Do you have an example where you have separate "plugin" projects working with your design?  If you do, I'm all in...and it could well set a standard in how many SL apps are created.

Cheers!

Hi Rob

To reiterate what everybody has said.

Your MVVM presentation was great.

I am new to Silverlight and C#, so my ignorance some times becomes a bit of a stumbling block.

I have pulled your whole framework to pieces and implemented it piece by piece into my test application.

I think your idea of convention over configuaration is great.

I however am feeling like a mechanic who has stripped down an engine and does not know where all the parts go.

I have spent a lot of time learning RIA services so I want to keep those in my framework.

I am also naming content controls in a certain way so that I can fill these in using your strategy at run-time. So on every page I have a header and footer and these are plugged in by the framework at run time.

But now the type of problem I face is how do I get these components and their modelviews to communicate with each other.

Maybe what I am saying is: are you not thinking of doing more comment on the actual workings of the Mix framework - After all you did encourage us to build our own frameworks - now I feel like I am up the creek without a paddle. Help!

Would you think reviewing one small section at a time of the framework and perhaps soliciting comment and questions and incrementally building up the pieces.

I would be more than happy to subscribe to such a service.

Kind regards Julian H

Excellent stuff!  I have a need for a lightweight MVVM architecture and this is a great inspiration.

How would you handle binding events?  I have views that I want to load data and do other things on load.  I was going to add another Bind in the ViewBinder base with EventInfo and maybe something like a ReflectiveEvent and extend it beyond getting data in the VM constructor.   Does this make sense or is there a better way, in your opinion?