Haris Custo

PlusConf is free online Conference founded by Benjamin Alijagic ,  you can watch videos from conference bellow.

The first one is by Allan Branch from LessEverything

@emanuelblagonic: “I totally agree – Your logo is not a brand!”  by @allanbranch

@jasonhanley: “In business, you are weeks away from losing your house, losing your car, and living with your f-ing mom.” #plusconf @allanbranch

@jeff_epstein: “Money is a great justification for doing something you don’t really want to do” the genius of @allanbranch  #livinthedream #plusconf

@NickRovisa: “Spend less, save more” – @allanbranch #plusconf – #plusconf live on http://livestream.com/plusconf

Other speakers you can watch at http://www.livestream.com/plusconf

As I said before, I’m starting my first Blog post series, and it would be about Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).

WPF, a component of Microsoft .NET Framework, empowers you to build the next-generation of Windows user experiences. WPF supports UI, media, documents, hardware acceleration, vector graphics, scalability to different form factors, integration with Windows, interactive data visualization, and superior content readability.

I’ll assume that you have basic information about WPF and that you have played a little with it and try to build something. I’m using VS 2010 for programming, and Expression Blend 4 for designing application.

WPF Application Architecture

This one is no-brainer, but I need to start with something Every time I’m creating new application I want to have place for Common code and Data access separated from my UI project. Even if you think that your application will be small one and that you don’t have any need to separate it, I would still suggest you  to take this advice and Separate Common classes and DataAccess from UI.

So for a start, I’ll have structure like this:

Tweet is WPF app which will consume data from Tweet.DataAccess (C# class library). Common library (as it’s name suggest) will contain all common stuff which is used by 2 or more projects. Basically it starts as an empty project and as your app evolve you will start to move methods or classes from other projects to common and reuse them as you need.

Tweet.DataAccess will be responsible for accessing/updating/saving data to Database. Here I will use Entity framework (EF) as ORM (Object relational mapper) but you can use anything you want (maybe LightSpeed or NHibernate). My database will be SQL CE (to keep examples simple) but thanks to EF and it’s option Generate database from Model,  I can create SQL Server or SQLite support in couple of minutes.

This was easy next time, we will go in details how to get data from database with Entity Framework.

A few minutes ago Enis Šahinović posted on twitter

But I disagree with him, look below

LOL

I was thinking to write blog post series about process of developing WPF applications.

The series would be about WPF and:

1. Main architecture of Client/Server application (the big picture)
2. Using Entity Framework with SQL Server, SQLite (or SQL CE)  and WPF (+Advanced topic on Error handling on Model level)
3. Authentication and Authorization
4. Navigation through Forms in WPF app.
5. Implementing MVVM pattern and using Commands (to have clear XAML forms without Code Behind files)
6. Localization with RESX files (+Special chapter of localization using Google Translate API)
7. Synchronization between multiple clients and Server (with sync framework)
8. Implementing design (From image to actual application)
9. Creating bindable User Controlls
10. Creating Styles, templates and Themes
11. Advanced printing in WPF
12. Creating Installation
13. Creating custom application updater
14. Easy way to control Errors in one place

Let me know in comments if you are interested in these topics or what else do you want to know?

Left side of this image is design not produced, but instructed, by developer (Me).

Right side of image is design created by designer (Emanuel Blagonic)

Which one is your favorite, and what is your profession?

Leave your thoughts in comments

This are my two boys playing