Wpf & Csla

Only if you are interested in seeing some sample data in Blend (or VS designer) for WPF and SL applications.  The default will return null.  The problem used to be that you would get errors in blend as objects were instantiated and trying to connect to application server.

Sergey Barskiy

Principal Consultant

office: 678.405.0687 | mobile: 404.388.1899

Magenic ®

Microsoft Worldwide Partner of the Year | Custom Development Solutions, Technical Innovation

Also, I noticed this code:

    private Csla.Server.DataPortalResult CreateDesignTimeObject(Type objectType, object criteria, Csla.Server.DataPortalContext context)
    {
      var obj = Activator.CreateInstance(objectType, true);
      object returnValue = null;
      returnValue = MethodCaller.CallMethodIfImplemented(obj, "DesignTime_Create");
      return new Csla.Server.DataPortalResult(returnValue);
    }

Does this mean that our BO's should implement DesignTime_Create to provide better designer support?

You should get some sample data.  I verrifed this in Blend, and I was able to see the data given that I overrode design_create method.  There is actually a demo project (WpfDesignTimeSupportDemo) that I used for testing in WPF.  Maybe you can loot and see what the differences are between your implementation and sample implementation. 

Sergey Barskiy

Principal Consultant

office: 678.405.0687 | mobile: 404.388.1899

Microsoft Worldwide Partner of the Year | Custom Development Solutions, Technical Innovation

Hmm.. I'm not getting any sample data back, but I seem to not be crashing anymore due to some checks I've added.

Yes, it does have to return design-time object.  It does not have to return “this”, you could use some kind of factory instead.  You can probably use design time flag to bypass some other run time functionality as well.

Sergey Barskiy

Principal Consultant

office: 678.405.0687 | mobile: 404.388.1899

Microsoft Worldwide Partner of the Year | Custom Development Solutions, Technical Innovation

Does DesignTime_Create have to return this?  I have it as a void method.

Mine is a little more complex... I try to follow the same data access patterns I usaually would and have calls to DataPortal.ChildFetch.  Would that screw things up?

Weird that this does not work – unless VS designer works differently from Blend.  You can try to attach debugger to blend and see if your design time code gets hist.  This will at least narrow down problem areas.  If you have data providers with initial load enabled, data portal will try to call fetch, but it should design time proxy currently, thus bypassing normal portal operations.

Sergey Barskiy

Principal Consultant

office: 678.405.0687 | mobile: 404.388.1899

Microsoft Worldwide Partner of the Year | Custom Development Solutions, Technical Innovation

Hmm... still no joy.  Not a huge deal.  I'm more concerned if there are any well known gotacha's when coding for Wpf using Csla... like specifically what code might get run if you follow the pattern in the Wpf sample.