MVVM CommandReference and KeyBinding

Recently when I was digging into MVVM sample in codeplex I came to notice one class named CommandReference.That class just contains a dependency property which is of ICommand.At first, I didn’t get why they created that class.But after seeing it’s application in the sample,I decided to add that in my MVVM.Core project because that was important when we come to a situation where  we need to bind a command to non dependency properties.Eg :InputBinding.Command
If you still didn’t get the importance of CommandReference just try to Bind a command to a KeyBinding as follows.

<Window.InputBindings>
        <KeyBinding Modifiers="Control"
                    Key="N"
                    Command="{Binding CreateCustomerCommand}" />
</Window.InputBindings>
 

The result will be an Exception

A 'Binding' cannot be set on the 'Command' property of type 'KeyBinding'. A 'Binding' can only be set on a DependencyProperty of a DependencyObject

Reason is simple the Command property is not DependencyProperty.To get rid of this we have to use the CommandReference.The usage is as follows.

<Window.Resources>
     <coreView:CommandReference x:Key="newCust"
                                Command="{Binding NewCustomerCommand}" />
</Window.Resources>
<Window.InputBindings>
    <KeyBinding Modifiers="Control"
                Key="N"
                Command="{StaticResource newCust}" />
</Window.InputBindings>

See the sample for more details.This is again a modified version of Josh Smith's MVVM sample.