Displaying warnings in a similar way to errors on a wpf control

Question

I would like to display warnings and errors when validating a business object and have these displayed visually to the user.

For example I have a business object class implementing an interface like so:

interface IOrderItem : IDataErrorInfo
{
  int ProductId { get; set; }
  string ProductName { get; set; }
  decimal Price { get; set; }
  IDictionary<string, string> Warnings { get; }
}

This is bound to the UI as follows:

<TextBox Text="{Binding Price, ValidatesOnDataErrors=True}/>

An error would be:

• Price < 0 => "Price cannot be less than 0"

This works nicely and draws a red border around the textbox when I put the error message on the business object using the IDataErrorInfo interface.

What I would like to do is also specify warnings, for example:

• Price < 15 || Price > 30 => "Price outside of tolerance"

These warnings would put an orange border around a text box and inform the user that there may be a problem but not stop them proceeding.

The warnings are stored in a string dictionary mapping PropertyName => WarningMessage in a similar way to IDataErrorInfo.

Question: What is the best way to go about this?

• Obviously I will need a Style that contains an orange border for the text box but how do I trigger it?
• I don't really want a seperate style for each textbox, so how can the style access the underlying binding to get the property name it should look up in the Dictionary.

Answer 1

Have you checked this http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WPF/wpfvalidation.aspx

EDIT: Please find the sample here http://www.filefactory.com/file/b3b4cb7/n/ValidationErrorsSample.zip

HTH