Does WPF databinding make things more of a pain than it is worth?

Question

Ok, So I have been stalled in my latest non-work project, trying to use WPF. I am just frankly annoyed at databinding. I thought it was supposed to make things simpler by binding data directly to the UI. But the more I learn about having to implement INotifyPropertyChanged to get things to notify the UI if they changed, seems to make the whole thing counter productive.

Am I missing something? It seems like a bunch of work and having to make the classes implemented INotifyPropertyChanged seems like a fishy way to get databinding to work.

What am I missing? I must be missing something. Please enlighten me into how to make databinding easy, or at the least straightforward.

Answer 1

If you want the UI be notified when the underlying data source changes, then you need some sort of notification mechanism. For WPF, INotifyPropertyChanged is that mechanism.

It's the same in Windows Forms as well, but Windows Forms also supports the old notification mechanism, where you have an event with the name <Property>Changed.

However, neither of these required these mechanisms if all you want to do is bind to the data once and display it.

If you are ok with not receiving notifications, then just bind to the data source and it will work.