Tuesday, May 19, 2009

WatermarkTextBox by inheriting TextBox

I am very happy to see that my previous post “WPF Watermark TextBox using XAML Style” helped a lot of peoples to solve their issues and currently that is the most popular post in my blog.That post describes about creating a WPF watermark textbox by changing it’s style.All the things are done in xaml and there is no property to set the water mark text.
There was a requirement from one of the readers for such a property.ie a Watermark property which decides the watermark text.So rewriting the sample with that property.
Here I just derived a new class called WatemarkTextBox from standard TextBox added a new dependency property called Watermark and defined default style for that control in generic.xaml.The steps are as follows

  1. Subclass TextBox and create a new class called WatermarkTextBox.
  2. Add a new DP called Watermark which is of type object.
  3. In the generic.xaml write the default style.
public class WatermarkTextBox : TextBox
{
static WatermarkTextBox()
{
DefaultStyleKeyProperty.OverrideMetadata(typeof(WatermarkTextBox),
new FrameworkPropertyMetadata(typeof(WatermarkTextBox)));
}

public object Watermark
{
get { return (object)GetValue(WatermarkProperty); }
set { SetValue(WatermarkProperty, value); }
}
// Using a DependencyProperty as the backing store for Watermark. This enables animation, styling, binding, etc...
public static readonly DependencyProperty WatermarkProperty = DependencyProperty.Register(
"Watermark",
typeof(object),
typeof(WatermarkTextBox),
new UIPropertyMetadata(null));
}

And its style in generic.xaml contains almost same elements as of my last post.But here I have used TemplateBinding to set Watermark into the TextBlock.

<Style TargetType="{x:Type local:WatermarkTextBox}">
<Setter Property="Foreground"
Value="{DynamicResource {x:Static SystemColors.ControlTextBrushKey}}" />
<Setter Property="Background"
Value="{DynamicResource {x:Static SystemColors.WindowBrushKey}}" />
<Setter Property="BorderBrush"
Value="Blue" />
<Setter Property="BorderThickness"
Value="1" />
<Setter Property="Padding"
Value="1" />
<Setter Property="AllowDrop"
Value="true" />
<Setter Property="FocusVisualStyle"
Value="{x:Null}" />
<Setter Property="Template">
<Setter.Value>
<ControlTemplate TargetType="{x:Type local:WatermarkTextBox}">
<Grid>
<Microsoft_Windows_Themes:ListBoxChrome x:Name="Bd"
SnapsToDevicePixels="true"
Background="{TemplateBinding Background}"
BorderBrush="{TemplateBinding BorderBrush}"
BorderThickness="{TemplateBinding BorderThickness}"
RenderFocused="{TemplateBinding IsKeyboardFocusWithin}"
RenderMouseOver="{TemplateBinding IsMouseOver}">
<ScrollViewer x:Name="PART_ContentHost"
SnapsToDevicePixels="{TemplateBinding SnapsToDevicePixels}" />
</Microsoft_Windows_Themes:ListBoxChrome>
<TextBlock x:Name="textBlock"
Opacity="0.345"
Text="{TemplateBinding Watermark}"
TextWrapping="Wrap"
Visibility="Hidden" />
</Grid>
<ControlTemplate.Triggers>
<MultiTrigger>
<MultiTrigger.Conditions>
<Condition Property="IsFocused"
Value="False" />
<Condition Property="Text"
Value="" />
</MultiTrigger.Conditions>
<Setter Property="Visibility"
TargetName="textBlock"
Value="Visible" />
</MultiTrigger>
</ControlTemplate.Triggers>
</ControlTemplate>
</Setter.Value>
</Setter>
</Style>

Download sample from here.

7 comments:

  1. Hi, very nice maybe they will include a control like that in theyr framework and then i will style it as you can see on my website (http://www.xamltemplates.net/)

    ReplyDelete
  2. plz include a sample on dependency property

    ReplyDelete
  3. If my understanding about your comment is right the sample is already there in skydrive.
    http://cid-890c06c8106550a0.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/BlogSamples/JoyfulWPF/WatermarkTextBox.zip

    Are you looking for something else?

    ReplyDelete
  4. The following change to the original watermark post makes the watermark changable.

    Instead of Text="Enter Text Here"
    Use Text="{TemplateBinding Tag}"

    Then you can use Tag="Enter your Text here" for the watermark text.

    I just came across this Tag templatebinding, so there may be a better way...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Tag...I forgot.
    Thats good idea.Thanks for sharing...

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hi how can you change the alignment of the watermarked text?

    The watermark currently seems to be aligned to the top rather than the centre?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Found it anyway. Thanks


    add VerticalAlignment="Center" to teh style.

    ReplyDelete