Silverlight: ViewModel trigger function in code behind

I have a bit of a problem with my Silverlight application, and my usage of the MVVM pattern.

In my Vi开发者_高级运维ew I have a DataGrid. The ItemsSource would normaly be bound to the ViewModel, but in my specific case I need the columns to be dynamic and my items collection consists of a Dictionary for each item, so I have no class properties to show. My solution was to generate all this in codebehind, since the actual design of the DataGrid has nothing to do with my ViewModel. This was the only solution I could think of since the columns can't be databound.

I have got all of this to work. My problem is that I'm using RIA and the view has no idea when the items collection has finished loading. I tried my design out by putting an ordinary button on the view to trigger the codebehind function, but obviously this solution is no good. I need my codebehind function to run as soon as my item collection has finished loading.

Can I make my codebehind listen to the ViewModel?

I have a feeling that you are messing up things somewhere.

For your question I think you can solve it by having an event in the ViewModel. Subscribe to that event in your view's view_Loaded event and call the codebehind function in the handler.

I would recommend you to recheck your design and to see if this is really necessary.

I understand what you mean, we once had to do the same thing generating random columns which is a PIA in silverlight because you would need some kind of object that has a dynamic set of properties.

I see you've found the Dictionary solution. What I would suggest, which isn't per sé the cleanest solution but it is cleaner then putting the stuff in the code behind, is to add this in a converter. Then bind the collection to the itemssource of an itemscontrol and then when the list propertychanged is raised you assemble the datagrid in the converter.

small example:

<ItemsControl Grid.Row="1" ItemsSource="{Binding theListOfEntities, Converter={StaticResource theconverter}}"/>