Difference between User Control and Custom Control Library [duplicate]

This question already has answers here: What is the difference between a User Control Library and a Custom Control Library? (3 answers)开发者_JAVA百科 Closed 1 year ago.

I'm working on creating a date/time user control in WPF using C# 2008. My first user control. I'm also using Matthew MacDonald's book, "Pro WPF in C# 2008". In that book he strongly recommended creating a user control using the WPF Custom Control Library project template; so I followed his suggestion. I've finished writing the code which would go into what I think of as the code-behind file. Now I'm ready to write the XAML.

The only problem is, I just discovered there is no corresponding .xaml file? So, I don't get why using a WPF Custom Control Library project is better, or prefered, when writing a user control?

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A user control and a custom control solve two distinctly different problems.

UserControls are meant to compose multiple WPF controls together, in order to make a set of functionality built out of other controls. This is often used to compose a portion of a window or screen in order to organize your development by allowing you to group multiple pieces of functionality into one "control". For example, if you wanted to make a control for editing a User which provided text boxes for first and last name, age, etc., a single UserControl could be dropped onto a Window and bound to a User instance to edit this. (In this case, you're using standard controls, such as TextBox, to "compose" a control for a more complex purpose.)

A CustomControl, however, is meant to be a new single control. This would typically be a replacement for a built-in control (which could not be redone via templating). I've found that the need for CustomControls is actually fairly rare in WPF, since the WPF templating options and attached properties allow you to do nearly anything with standard controls, once you learn them fully.

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I would also add, if you're intending to inherit from your control, then using a usercontrol is will complicate matters. For example, if create a base usercontrol that has a layout defined in Xaml, WPF framework won't allow you to inherit this control and use Xaml to define the layout for the subclass. In dotnet 3.5 Xaml control can't inherit from another Xaml control