Checkboxes binding - what is better solution?

Question

I have more than 20 checkboxes in my wpf form. I need store IsChecked values from all of them in some object.

I know two ways.

1) bind all checkboxes to corresponding properties in object using dependency property like here

2) handle Clicked event of all of them

Which solution is better? Is there a better solution taking up less space in code-behind?

Answer 1

Definitely use a Binding

If your CheckBoxes are unrelated and are all over the place, you'll need 20 different dependency properties to bind to in your DataContext or ViewModel

If your CheckBoxes are all together, such as listed one after another or in a Grid, you can put them in a collection and bind an ItemsControl to them

<ItemsControl ItemsSource="{Binding Options}">
    <ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>
        <DataTemplate>
            <CheckBox Content="{Binding Description}" 
                      IsChecked="{Binding IsChecked}" />
        </DataTemplate>
    </ItemsControl>
</ItemsControl>

Your ViewModel or DataContext would contain something like this:

private List<Option> options;

private List<Option> Options
{
    get 
    {
        if (options== null)
        {
            options = new List<Option>();

            // Load Options - For example:
            options.Add(new Option { Description = "Option A", IsChecked = false });
            options.Add(new Option { Description = "Option B" });
            options.Add(new Option { Description = "Option C", IsChecked = true});
        }
        return options; 
    }
}

And your Option class would simply be

public class Option
{
    public string Description { get; set; }
    public bool IsChecked { get; set; }
}

Answer 2

Binding.

The reason is simple. If you decided to hook up to the IsChecked event you would have to have extra code to figure out which property to which check box.

Worse case is you have a method for each.

With binding once you set it to the checkbox you are done. All you have to do is save the object at the end.

Answer 3

If you use a good MVVM framework you can use binding without having to do them by hand(only name them to some convention) - I like Caliburn Micro but there are a lot of good ones out there.