Attached Properties in WPF: Special Kind of Dependency Properties

Attached Properties in WPF: Special Kind of Dependency Properties

Attached properties are a special kind of DependencyProperties. They allow you to attach a value to an object that does not know anything about this value.

A good example for this concept are layout panels. Each layout panel needs different data to align its child elements. The Canvas needs Top and Left, The DockPanel needs Dock, etc. Since you can write your own layout panel, the list is infinite. So you see, it's not possible to have all those properties on all WPF controls.

The solution are attached properties. They are defined by the control that needs the data from another control in a specific context. For example an element that is aligned by a parent layout panel.

To set the value of an attached property, add an attribute in XAML with a prefix of the element that provides the attached property. To set the the Canvas.Top and Canvas.Left property of a button aligned within a Canvas panel, you write it like this:

<Canvas>

    <Button Canvas.Top="20" Canvas.Left="20" Content="Click me!"/>

</Canvas>

public static readonly DependencyProperty TopProperty =

    DependencyProperty.RegisterAttached("Top", 

    typeof(double), typeof(Canvas),

    new FrameworkPropertyMetadata(0d,

        FrameworkPropertyMetadataOptions.Inherits));

public static void SetTop(UIElement element, double value)

{

    element.SetValue(TopProperty, value);

}

public static double GetTop(UIElement element)

{

    return (double)element.GetValue(TopProperty);

}