WPF: Can use StaticResource only once

Question

I have a Static resource defined in my WPF Windows XAML:

<Window.Resources>
    <Image x:Key="MyImage" Source="../Icons/img.png" Width="16" Height="16" Stretch="None" />
</Window.Resources>

I want to use it two times:

<Grid>
    <Button Content="{StaticResource MyImage}"  RenderOptions.BitmapScalingMode="NearestNeighbor" RenderOptions.EdgeMode="Aliased" />
</Grid>

...

<Grid>
    <Button Content="{StaticResource MyImage}"  RenderOptions.BitmapScalingMode="NearestNeighbor" RenderOptions.EdgeMode="Aliased" />
</Grid>

But it gets displayed as button image only once. On the last button. The first button has no image.

When I remove the second button then it works for the first one. How to use the StaticResource multiple times? The Visual Studio GUI Designer displays the images on both buttons.

Answer 1

By default, XAML resources are shared, which means there is only one instance that is reused as often as it is referenced in XAML.

However, an Image control (as any other UI element) can only have one parent control, so can't be shared.

You can set the x:Shared attribute to false:

<Image x:Key="MyImage" x:Shared="false" Source="../Icons/img.png" Width="16" Height="16"/>

---

You typically don't use UI elements as resources. An alternative would be a BitmapImage resource like this:

<Window.Resources>
    <BitmapImage x:Key="MyImage" UriSource="../Icons/img.png"/>
</Window.Resources>

<Button>
    <Image Source="{StaticResource MyImage}" Width="16" Height="16"/>
</Button>