Using static function binding in XAML

Question

I have a XAML file, where i want to replace field names with variables so i can have translation support for more languages for my application.

The way i currently use translation in my application is something like Translation.getString("stringname") (Translation is a static class with static getString function which fetches the translated string from a resource file)

Now for the xaml part I have something like this:

<TextBlock Text="Some string for translation" VerticalAlignment="Center"/>

I can do something like this:

Code:

var translatedString = Translation.getString("stringname")

Xaml:

<TextBlock Text="{Binding translatedString}" VerticalAlignment="Center"/>

But this is pretty ugly and verbose. Can i somehow access the function directly from xaml?

Such as:

<TextBlock Text="{CustomBinding stringname}" VerticalAlignment="Center"/>

Where i somewhere in my project assign that using "CustomBinding bla" will run it as a function Translation.getString("bla") and uses the returned string for my desired translation effect.

Is this possible somehow?

Is there some other "business standard" in which this is usually done?

Answer 1

You can do that by creating custom MarkupExtension and use that in place of Binding.

public class TranslateString : MarkupExtension
{
    public string Value { get; set; }

    public override object ProvideValue(IServiceProvider serviceProvider)
    {
        if (String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(Value))
            return Value;
        return Translation.getString(Value);
    }
}

Now, you can use it from XAML like this:

<TextBlock Text="{local:TranslateString Value='Some string for translation'}"/>

Ofcourse you have to define namespace local at root level like this:

xmlns:local="clr-namespace:WpfApplication1"

Replace WpfApplication1 with actual namespace of class TranslateString.