Set focus on TextBox in WPF from view model

Question

Let me answer to your question in three parts.

1. I'm wondering what is "cs.txtCompanyID" in your example? Is it a TextBox control? If yes, then you are on a wrong way. Generally speaking it's not a good idea to have any reference to UI in your ViewModel. You can ask "Why?" but this is another question to post on Stackoverflow :).

2. The best way to track down issues with Focus is... debugging .Net source code. No kidding. It saved me a lot of time many times. To enable .net source code debugging refer to Shawn Bruke's blog.

3. Finally, general approach that I use to set focus from ViewModel is Attached Properties. I wrote very simple attached property, which can be set on any UIElement. And it can be bound to ViewModel's property "IsFocused" for example. Here it is:

   public static class FocusExtension
   {
       public static bool GetIsFocused(DependencyObject obj)
       {
           return (bool) obj.GetValue(IsFocusedProperty);
       }
   
       public static void SetIsFocused(DependencyObject obj, bool value)
       {
           obj.SetValue(IsFocusedProperty, value);
       }
   
       public static readonly DependencyProperty IsFocusedProperty =
           DependencyProperty.RegisterAttached(
               "IsFocused", typeof (bool), typeof (FocusExtension),
               new UIPropertyMetadata(false, OnIsFocusedPropertyChanged));
   
       private static void OnIsFocusedPropertyChanged(
           DependencyObject d, 
           DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
       {
           var uie = (UIElement) d;
           if ((bool) e.NewValue)
           {
               uie.Focus(); // Don't care about false values.
           }
       }
   }
   

   Now in your View (in XAML) you can bind this property to your ViewModel:

   <TextBox local:FocusExtension.IsFocused="{Binding IsUserNameFocused}" />
   

Hope this helps :). If it doesn't refer to the answer #2.

Cheers.

I know this question has been answered a thousand times over by now, but I made some edits to Anvaka's contribution that I think will help others that had similar issues that I had.

Firstly, I changed the above Attached Property like so:

public static class FocusExtension
{
    public static readonly DependencyProperty IsFocusedProperty = 
        DependencyProperty.RegisterAttached("IsFocused", typeof(bool?), typeof(FocusExtension), new FrameworkPropertyMetadata(IsFocusedChanged){BindsTwoWayByDefault = true});

    public static bool? GetIsFocused(DependencyObject element)
    {
        if (element == null)
        {
            throw new ArgumentNullException("element");
        }

        return (bool?)element.GetValue(IsFocusedProperty);
    }

    public static void SetIsFocused(DependencyObject element, bool? value)
    {
        if (element == null)
        {
            throw new ArgumentNullException("element");
        }

        element.SetValue(IsFocusedProperty, value);
    }

    private static void IsFocusedChanged(DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
    {
        var fe = (FrameworkElement)d;

        if (e.OldValue == null)
        {
            fe.GotFocus += FrameworkElement_GotFocus;
            fe.LostFocus += FrameworkElement_LostFocus;
        }

        if (!fe.IsVisible)
        {
            fe.IsVisibleChanged += new DependencyPropertyChangedEventHandler(fe_IsVisibleChanged);
        }

        if (e.NewValue != null && (bool)e.NewValue)
        {
            fe.Focus();
        }
    }

    private static void fe_IsVisibleChanged(object sender, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
    {
        var fe = (FrameworkElement)sender;
        if (fe.IsVisible && (bool)fe.GetValue(IsFocusedProperty))
        {
            fe.IsVisibleChanged -= fe_IsVisibleChanged;
            fe.Focus();
        }
    }

    private static void FrameworkElement_GotFocus(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
    {
        ((FrameworkElement)sender).SetValue(IsFocusedProperty, true);
    }

    private static void FrameworkElement_LostFocus(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
    {
        ((FrameworkElement)sender).SetValue(IsFocusedProperty, false);
    }
}

My reason for adding the visibility references were tabs. Apparently if you used the attached property on any other tab outside of the initially visible tab, the attached property didn't work until you manually focused the control.

The other obstacle was creating a more elegant way of resetting the underlying property to false when it lost focus. That's where the lost focus events came in.

<TextBox            
    Text="{Binding Description}"
    FocusExtension.IsFocused="{Binding IsFocused}"/>

If there's a better way to handle the visibility issue, please let me know.

Note: Thanks to Apfelkuacha for the suggestion of putting the BindsTwoWayByDefault in the DependencyProperty. I had done that long ago in my own code, but never updated this post. The Mode=TwoWay is no longer necessary in the WPF code due to this change.

I think the best way is to keep the MVVM principle clean, so basically you must use the Messenger Class provided with the MVVM Light and here is how to use it:

in your viewmodel(exampleViewModel.cs):write the following

 Messenger.Default.Send<string>("focus", "DoFocus");

now in your View.cs(not the XAML the view.xaml.cs) write the following in the constructor

 public MyView()
        {
            InitializeComponent();

            Messenger.Default.Register<string>(this, "DoFocus", doFocus);
        }
        public void doFocus(string msg)
        {
            if (msg == "focus")
                this.txtcode.Focus();
        }

that method owrks just fine and with less code and maintaining MVVM standards

None of these worked for me exactly, but for the benefit of others, this is what I ended up writing based on some of the code already provided here.

Usage would be as follows:

<TextBox ... h:FocusBehavior.IsFocused="True"/>

And the implementation would be as follows:

/// <summary>
/// Behavior allowing to put focus on element from the view model in a MVVM implementation.
/// </summary>
public static class FocusBehavior
{
    #region Dependency Properties
    /// <summary>
    /// <c>IsFocused</c> dependency property.
    /// </summary>
    public static readonly DependencyProperty IsFocusedProperty =
        DependencyProperty.RegisterAttached("IsFocused", typeof(bool?),
            typeof(FocusBehavior), new FrameworkPropertyMetadata(IsFocusedChanged));
    /// <summary>
    /// Gets the <c>IsFocused</c> property value.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="element">The element.</param>
    /// <returns>Value of the <c>IsFocused</c> property or <c>null</c> if not set.</returns>
    public static bool? GetIsFocused(DependencyObject element)
    {
        if (element == null)
        {
            throw new ArgumentNullException("element");
        }
        return (bool?)element.GetValue(IsFocusedProperty);
    }
    /// <summary>
    /// Sets the <c>IsFocused</c> property value.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="element">The element.</param>
    /// <param name="value">The value.</param>
    public static void SetIsFocused(DependencyObject element, bool? value)
    {
        if (element == null)
        {
            throw new ArgumentNullException("element");
        }
        element.SetValue(IsFocusedProperty, value);
    }
    #endregion Dependency Properties

    #region Event Handlers
    /// <summary>
    /// Determines whether the value of the dependency property <c>IsFocused</c> has change.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="d">The dependency object.</param>
    /// <param name="e">The <see cref="System.Windows.DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs"/> instance containing the event data.</param>
    private static void IsFocusedChanged(DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
    {
        // Ensure it is a FrameworkElement instance.
        var fe = d as FrameworkElement;
        if (fe != null && e.OldValue == null && e.NewValue != null && (bool)e.NewValue)
        {
            // Attach to the Loaded event to set the focus there. If we do it here it will
            // be overridden by the view rendering the framework element.
            fe.Loaded += FrameworkElementLoaded;
        }
    }
    /// <summary>
    /// Sets the focus when the framework element is loaded and ready to receive input.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="sender">The sender.</param>
    /// <param name="e">The <see cref="System.Windows.RoutedEventArgs"/> instance containing the event data.</param>
    private static void FrameworkElementLoaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
    {
        // Ensure it is a FrameworkElement instance.
        var fe = sender as FrameworkElement;
        if (fe != null)
        {
            // Remove the event handler registration.
            fe.Loaded -= FrameworkElementLoaded;
            // Set the focus to the given framework element.
            fe.Focus();
            // Determine if it is a text box like element.
            var tb = fe as TextBoxBase;
            if (tb != null)
            {
                // Select all text to be ready for replacement.
                tb.SelectAll();
            }
        }
    }
    #endregion Event Handlers
}

This is an old thread, but there doesn't seem to be an answer with code that addresses the issues with Anavanka's accepted answer: it doesn't work if you set the property in the viewmodel to false, or if you set your property to true, the user manually clicks on something else, and then you set it to true again. I couldn't get Zamotic's solution to work reliably in these cases either.

Pulling together some of the discussions above gives me the code below which does address these issues I think:

public static class FocusExtension
{
    public static bool GetIsFocused(DependencyObject obj)
    {
        return (bool)obj.GetValue(IsFocusedProperty);
    }

    public static void SetIsFocused(DependencyObject obj, bool value)
    {
        obj.SetValue(IsFocusedProperty, value);
    }

    public static readonly DependencyProperty IsFocusedProperty =
        DependencyProperty.RegisterAttached(
         "IsFocused", typeof(bool), typeof(FocusExtension),
         new UIPropertyMetadata(false, null, OnCoerceValue));

    private static object OnCoerceValue(DependencyObject d, object baseValue)
    {
        if ((bool)baseValue)
            ((UIElement)d).Focus();
        else if (((UIElement) d).IsFocused)
            Keyboard.ClearFocus();
        return ((bool)baseValue);
    }
}

Having said that, this is still complex for something that can be done in one line in codebehind, and CoerceValue isn't really meant to be used in this way, so maybe codebehind is the way to go.

In my case, the FocusExtension didn't work until I change the method OnIsFocusedPropertyChanged. The original one was working only in debug when a break point stopped the process. At runtime, the process is too quick and nothing happend. With this little modification and the help of our friend Task, this is working fine in both scenarios.

private static void OnIsFocusedPropertyChanged(DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
{
  var uie = (UIElement)d;
  if ((bool)e.NewValue)
  {
    var action = new Action(() => uie.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke((Action)(() => uie.Focus())));
    Task.Factory.StartNew(action);
  }
}

The problem is that once the IsUserNameFocused is set to true, it will never be false. This solves it by handling the GotFocus and LostFocus for the FrameworkElement.

I was having trouble with the source code formatting so here is a link