Xamarin Forms listview databinding

Question

I am currently following this guide:

http://www.morganskinner.com/2015/01/xamarin-forms-contacts-search.html

I am willing to make a contacts page in my app, like the one showed in the pictures there, still something is not working out as it should for me:

I wrote/copied the XAML:

    <Grid.RowDefinitions>
      <RowDefinition Height="Auto"/>
      <RowDefinition Height="*"/>
    </Grid.RowDefinitions>

    <SearchBar x:Name="search" Placeholder="Search"/>

    <ListView x:Name="ProvaView" Grid.Row="1" ItemsSource="{Binding FilteredContacts}" IsGroupingEnabled="true" GroupDisplayBinding="{Binding Key}" GroupShortNameBinding="{Binding Key}">
      <ListView.ItemTemplate>
        <DataTemplate>
          <TextCell Text="{Binding Name}" TextColor="Black" Detail="{Binding PhoneNumber}" DetailColor="Gray">
          </TextCell>
        </DataTemplate>
      </ListView.ItemTemplate>
    </ListView>

  </Grid>

and now I am trying to "display something", not dinamically loaded (yet), from a list of data.

I declared a class like this:

 public class Contact
    {
        public string Name { get; set; }
        public string PhoneNumber { get; set; }
    }
}

and now the code behind the xaml is this:

public partial class ContactsPage : MasterDetailPage
    {
        public List<Contact> FilteredContacts = new List<Contact>
            {
                new Contact
                {
                    Name = "Guido",
                    PhoneNumber = "3292773477"
                },
                new Contact
                {
                    Name = "Luca",
                    PhoneNumber = "3472737445"
                },
                new Contact
                {
                    Name = "Luca",
                    PhoneNumber = "3472737445"
                }
            };

        public ContactsPage()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
            ProvaView.ItemsSource = FilteredContacts;
        }
}

When I launch the app, all I get anyway is an empty listview, with 3 fields but nothing in it.

Where am I doing wrong?

Also, straight from the page where I am working off, I can't understand the meaning of these Fields associated to the listview:

GroupDisplayBinding="{Binding Key}" GroupShortNameBinding="{Binding Key}"

and as much as I could look around on the web, I coudln't find any reference to both of them.

Answer 1

Most likely the problem is with the way you declared FilteredContacts, it should be a property, and not a field. The reflection mechanism used in binding only searches for properties, fields are not included.