Loading pages dynamically in Silverlight

I often find myself creating a large number of small test pages in my application, and every time I want to test one of them, I will have to go into App.Xaml.cs and change which page to load by setting the RootVisual.

Therefore I created a small class that allows you to on-the-fly change the currently loaded user control. It uses the #anchor tag in the URL so you can link directly to that page and use the back/forward buttons between your test pages. Furthermore, it will add a small unobtrusive 10x10px dropdown in the upper left corner. Clicking it will show you a list of all user controls available in your assembly, so you quickly can navigate to a specific user control.

To use it, first copy the code below, and add it to your project.

 

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Reflection;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Browser;
using System.Windows.Controls;
 
namespace SharpGIS
{
    public class ControlNavigator
    {
        private string currentHash;
        private System.Windows.Application application;
        private Grid rootGrid = new Grid();
        private string defaultControlName;
 
        /// <summary>
        /// Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="ControlNavigator"/> class.
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="application">The application to navigate.</param>
        /// <param name="defaultControl">The default control to load when no/invalid anchor is specified.</param>
        public ControlNavigator(System.Windows.Application application, UIElement defaultControl)
        {
            this.application = application;
            defaultControlName = defaultControl.GetType().FullName;
            CreateControl();
            UIElement element = null;
            if (HtmlPage.IsEnabled)
            {
                System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherTimer timer = new System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherTimer();
                timer.Interval = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(500);
                timer.Tick += timer_Tick;
                currentHash = GetAnchor();
                element = LoadElement(currentHash);
                timer.Start();
            }
            ShowElement(element ?? defaultControl);
        }
 
        private void CreateControl()
        {
            Grid grid = new Grid();
            grid.Children.Add(rootGrid);
            ComboBox box = new ComboBox()
            {
                Width = 10,
                Height = 10,
                Opacity = 0.5,
                ItemsSource = GetUserControls(),
                HorizontalAlignment = HorizontalAlignment.Left,
                VerticalAlignment = VerticalAlignment.Top,
                Cursor = System.Windows.Input.Cursors.Hand
            };
            box.SelectionChanged += new SelectionChangedEventHandler(box_SelectionChanged);
            grid.Children.Add(box);
            this.application.RootVisual = grid;
        }
 
        private void box_SelectionChanged(object sender, SelectionChangedEventArgs e)
        {
            string value = (sender as ComboBox).SelectedItem as string;
            if (HtmlPage.IsEnabled)
                HtmlPage.Window.Navigate(new Uri("#" + value, UriKind.Relative));
            else
                if (rootGrid.Children.Count == 0 || rootGrid.Children[0].GetType().FullName != value)
                    ShowElement(LoadElement(value));
        }
 
        private void timer_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            string hash = GetAnchor();
            if (hash != currentHash && 
                (rootGrid.Children.Count==0 || rootGrid.Children[0].GetType().FullName!=hash))
            {
                UIElement element = LoadElement(hash);
                if (element != null)
                {
                    ShowElement(element);
                }
            }
            currentHash = hash;
        }
 
        private void ShowElement(UIElement element)
        {
            if (element == null) return;
            rootGrid.Children.Clear();
            rootGrid.Children.Add(element);
        }
 
        private UIElement LoadElement(string name)
        {
            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(name)) name = defaultControlName;
            try
            {
                return Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().CreateInstance(name) as UIElement;
            }
            catch (System.Exception ex)
            {
                System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(
                    string.Format("Couldn't load control '{0}':\n{1}\n{2}",
                    name, ex.Message, ex.StackTrace));
                MessageBox.Show(string.Format("Failed to load control {0}. See output for stack trace", name));
            }
            return null;
        }
 
        private static string GetAnchor()
        {
            if (HtmlPage.IsEnabled)
                return HtmlPage.Window.CurrentBookmark;
            else
                return null;
        }
 
        /// <summary>
        /// Creates a list of UserControls in this assembly that has an empty constructor
        /// </summary>
        /// <returns></returns>
        private List<string> GetUserControls()
        {
            List<string> types = new List<string>();
            Assembly assembly = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
            foreach (Type type in assembly.GetTypes())
            {
                if (type.IsSubclassOf(typeof(UserControl)) && type.GetConstructor(new Type[] { }) != null)
                    types.Add(type.FullName);
            }
            return types;
        }
    }
}

Go to Application_Startup() in App.Xaml.cs and change the code to:

new SharpGIS.ControlNavigator(this, new MyPage());
where MyPage() is the page control that you want to load by default.

Download code sample here

View online demo

Why EPSG:4326 is usually the wrong “projection”

…or why spherical coordinate systems are not flat!

One of the most common ways the round world is displayed on a map is using the simplest projection we have:

x = longitude
y = latitude

The name of this projection is “Plate Carree”, and is widely used because it is so simple. However we often seem to forget that we are talking about a projection. Therefore the spatial reference for this projection is very often (mis)referenced as a spherical coordinate system like the following for EPSG:4326:

GEOGCS["GCS_WGS_1984",DATUM["D_WGS_1984",SPHEROID["WGS_1984",6378137,298.257223563]],
PRIMEM["Greenwich",0],UNIT["Degree",0.017453292519943295]]

GEOGCS denotes “Geographical Coordinate System”, meaning a spherical coordinate system using angles for latitude and longitudes, not X’s and Y’s. However, the moment we project this map onto a flat screen or piece of paper, we projected the coordinate system (using the simple formula above), so how can the spatial reference of our map be the above one?

I found that in ArcMap you can manually define a projected coordinate system that renders the same map, but correctly identifies the coordinate system as being projected. Below is the Well-known-text representation of this projection string (note how PROJCS denotes projected coordinate system, and how EPSG:4326 is defined inside it):

PROJCS["World_Plate_Carree_Degrees",GEOGCS["GCS_WGS_1984",
DATUM["D_WGS_1984",SPHEROID["WGS_1984",6378137,298.257223563]],
PRIMEM["Greenwich",0],UNIT["Degree",0.017453292519943295]
],
PROJECTION["Plate_Carree"],PARAMETER["False_Easting",0],
PARAMETER["False_Northing",0],PARAMETER["Central_Meridian",0],
UNIT["Degree",111319.49079327357264771338267056]]

As far as I know we don’t have a spatial reference ID for the above (EPSG:54001 comes close but uses a different linear unit), so we often incorrectly start using EPSG:4326 to describe a projection. This has been done for so long, that this is now common (mal)practice. Even OGC’s WMS specification allows you request flat maps in a spherical coordinate system, even though this doesn’t really make any sense.

So why is this a problem? Well until recently it hasn’t really been a problem, mostly because it was rare that the spherical coordinate were correctly handled, and most applications assumed that the world was flat. However, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 can correctly handle spherical coordinates, and suddenly this becomes a major problem.

Below is a query on all the counties that follow the red line defined by two points. The blue polygons is the result returned. The map claims that its spatial reference is EPSG:4326. Because of the curvature Earth, a straight line between the two endpoints looks like a curve on the projected map, so the results returned seems like they don’t match with the line, but they are in fact the counties on the line between the two endpoints if you think in a spherical coordinate system.

image

The real problem here is not that the line is not really a curve (I drew the line like that because I want the features along that latitude). The problem is that the line didn’t know that it was projected, because the map it was displayed on was incorrectly set to EPSG:4326. However had the application known that this was not a spherical coordinate system, but a Plate Carree projection, it would have known that when converting from the flat coordinate system to the spherical coordinate system, it should ensure that my line follows the latitude. But because the input line already claims to be in spherical units, the application can not know that it needs to do anything to it (aside the fact that the application of course knows that this came from a flat screen map, but the business logic is of course separate from the UI).

This brings me to another even worse issue: I’d like to make the claim that almost all of the data you have that claims to be in EPSG:4326 has never been EPSG:4326 ! (point data excluded).

Example: Most of the northern US border roughly follows the 49’th latitude. Let’s for sake of argument define the whole northern border as two points, from coast to coast, 49 degrees north. If I then think that my data is in EPSG:4326 (or any other geographic coordinate system), the border will NOT be following the 49th latitude, but go along a great circle that cuts into Canada.

So let us thank Microsoft for creating a database that handles spherical coordinates correctly, and for giving us major headaches when trying to handle these things correctly in a clean clear way :-). Of course there wouldn’t be any headaches if we never mixed spherical and flat coordinate systems in the first place.

Silverlight and WPF code reuse pitfalls.

The idea is really great: Write your code once, and reuse it across all your platforms. This is one of the great things about .NET. I can reuse business logic in ASP.NET, Mobile, Desktop, Embedded devices, Phones, Web services and so on. Usually the only difference is the UI that behaves a little different on the various platforms.

With WPF and Silverlight, even the UI code can be reused between Desktop and Web, since Silverlight is a subset of WPF. That means that any Silverlight code should be able to run in a WPF application, right? Well at least that’s what Microsoft keeps telling us, and you will fine numerous blog posts discussing it. However, in reality it’s not that straight forward. I’ve been trying to reuse some Silverlight code in a WPF application, and ran into a lot of headaches. What I found is that Silverlight is NOT a subset of WPF and .NET. It is a completely new framework with the subset as a design goal, but Microsoft made several mistakes, some even so bad that fixing it in either WPF or Silverlight would cause a breaking change. In other cases the XAML syntax is incompatible different. This means that you won’t get around using several compiler conditionals and duplicate XAML files.

Below is a list of some of the things I’ve run into, and I’ll try and add to it if I found more. I you know of more, or find errors or explanation to differences please add comments below.

For code that is only for Silverlight I have declared a SILVERLIGHT compiler conditional. so anything inside a #if SILVERLIGHT block is Silverlight only code, and vice verse if it’s in #if !SILVERLIGHT or #else it’s for WPF.

As a side note, the following blog posts discusses some good practices for reusing the same code files in your WPF and Silverlight projects: Sharing source code between .NET and Silverlight. However it hardly deals with code differences like the ones below.

Loading a bitmap

Loading bitmaps are probably one of the biggest differences in the two frameworks (that I’ve seen). In WPF you must call BeginInit and EndInit, and checking for download errors are very different, which requires you to use two different handlers for handling an image load error.

BitmapImage bmi = new BitmapImage();
#if 
!SILVERLIGHTbmi.BeginInit();
#endif
Image img = new Image();
bmi.UriSource = new Uri(url, UriKind.Absolute);
#if
SILVERLIGHTimg.ImageFailed += new EventHandler<ExceptionRoutedEventArgs>(img_ImageFailed); //Silverlight specific error handler
#else
bmi.DownloadFailed += new EventHandler<System.Windows.Media.ExceptionEventArgs>(bmi_DownloadFailed); //WPF specific error handler
bmi.EndInit();
#endif
img.Source = bmi;

Modifying Animations

WPF is very restrictive when it comes to working with animations. When you initialize the animation, you must use an overload that takes the element you are modifying as well as specifying that its modifiable. Silverlight doesn’t have any of these overloads, and is there fore not required.

#if SILVERLIGHT
myStoryboard.Begin();
myStoryboard.Stop();
#else
myStoryboard.Begin(element, true); //true allows for changing animation later
myStoryboard.Stop(element); //element parameter required when Begin was called with element
#endif

Delay Signing

Silverlight does not support delay signing of your assemblies. This might not be a big issue for you though.

Binding to Dictionary

This is more of a subset limitation, but it’s an annoying one, that is fairly tricky to get around.

In WPF you can bind a Dictionary<string,object> object as simple as :

<TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=MyDictionary.[KeyName]}" />

However in Silverlight you have to create your own value converter:

public class DictionaryItemConverter : IValueConverter
{
   public object Convert(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, CultureInfo culture)
    {
   var dict = value as Dictionary<string, string>;
   if (dict != null)
   {
     return dict[parameter as string];
   }
     throw new NotImplementedException();
   }
   public object ConvertBack(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, CultureInfo culture)
   {
     throw new NotImplementedException();
   }
}

Using the converter you can then bind your dictionary:

<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White">
    <Grid.Resources>
   <local:DictionaryItemConverter x:Name="myDictConvert" />
    </Grid.Resources>
    <TextBlock Text="{Binding Converter={StaticResource myDictConvert}, ConverterParameter=KeyName}" />
</Grid>

(note that you will have to define the local: namespace to point to the namespace/assembly where DictionaryItemConverters is placed).

Value converters are pretty powerful though, so this lesson might come in handy later. This approach does work for WPF too.

Accessing resources declared in XAML from code

Accessing resources you have in your XAML is a common pitfall. If I were to declare a resource in a grid like this:

<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot">
    <Grid.Resources>
   <local:MyClass x:Key="myResource" />
    </Grid.Resources>
</Grid>

In WPF you would access it like this:

object o = LayoutRoot.Resources["myResource"];

However in Silverlight that would return null! Instead in Silverlight you have to use x:Name instead of x:Key in your XAML:

<local:MyClass x:Name="myResource" />

Unfortunately in Silverlight you can’t declare both a Key and a Name in your XAML (you can in WPF), so you will have to maintain two different XAML files. In WPF you are required to specify a x:Key attribute, so you can’t just make do with the name attribute either.

Control Templates

When you create a control template, you will have to assign the type that the control template belongs to. Here’s the syntax in Silverlight:

<ControlTemplate TargetType="local:MyControl">

And in WPF:

<ControlTemplate TargetType="{x:Type local:MyControl}">

Debug.WriteLine

This one is a little interesting, because it's a method in Silverlight that proves that it’s not necessarily a subset of WPF, since here’s a method that actually have different overloads in Silverlight and WPF. I often use System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine to write out values or warnings that I or the developer should be aware of, but not necessarily is an error.

Here are the overloads in Silverlight:

public static void WriteLine(object value);
public static void WriteLine(string message);
public static void WriteLine(string format, params object[] args); //NOT IN WPF! 

and WPF:

public static void WriteLine(object value);
public static void WriteLine(string message);
public static void WriteLine(object value, string category);
public static void WriteLine(string message, string category); 

Notice that the 3rd method in Silverlight which is equivalent of using string.Format, doesn’t exist in WPF. Therefore always use WriteLine(string.Format(format,args)) instead.

OnApplyTemplate fired in different order

The OnApplyTemplate call on your controls are fired at different times in WPF and Silverlight. This can cause a lot of problems if you rely on certain events to have happened before the OnApplyTemplate event has triggered, or vice versa. This is a case where you have to be really careful with code-reuse in Silverlight and WPF.

In the example below I created a simple sample and ran it in Silverlight and WPF, with breakpoints in each loaded handler, constructor and OnApplyTemplate in my custom control.  The XAML is below (simplified and removed namespace declarations for readability):

<UserControl Loaded="UserControl_Loaded”>     <my:Control Loaded="MyControl_Loaded /> </UserControl>

Order the methods were hit:

  Silverlight WPF
1. UserControl Constructor UserControl Constructor
2. MyControl Constructor MyControl Constructor
3. MyControl Loaded MyControl.OnApplyTemplate
4. UserControl Loaded UserControl Loaded
5. MyControl.OnApplyTemplate MyControl Loaded

See this post for a workaround.

Case sensitivity

Silverlight in general seems less restrictive when it comes to your XAML. For instance case sensitivity. I was recently trying to use a class modifier on my UserControl using the following:

<UserControl x:ClassModifier=”Internal”>

However this doesn’t work in WPF. It turns out that the “internal” keyword must be lowercase in WPF.

--------------------------

Jeff Wilcox also has a list of issues that he hit in his gravatar project described in this blog post: http://www.jeff.wilcox.name/2009/03/gravatar-control/