Series Planned: Through Hoops with Silverlight and MVVM

UPDATE: Due to some odd circumstances  I will be unable to update these posts for a while..I shall return to them however when time allows. I apologize!

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    I have been racking my brain lately trying to get this whole Model View View-Model pattern locked down and I think I might have it. This weekend I am going to try to go on a Video screencast extravaganza and record as much as I can about making Silverlight do freakin' backflips with the MVVM pattern.  I will be filing these bad asses under the Silver Tips title, so search Silver Tips on my site to get at these.

   What was kicking my ass for days was how to implement a Command behavior within Silverlight that mimics the command behavior within WPF. I had looked at Nikhil's Post on this and thought that it was valuable, but it wasn't a complete implementation. Then I found a gem from a codeplex project released last month, SL Extensions, that had an entire command service already in place. The way I see it, with the Silverlight toolkit out, and now these extensions, I don't need to go nuts writing my own framework.

   The plan looks like this (from 50,000 ft, and it is windy up here, things might change):

1. Hello world with this MVVM junk. (First Post is up! go check it out: http://www.ryankeeter.com/silverlight/silverlight-mvvm-pt-1-hello-world-style/)

2. Implementing a regular asynchronous callback structure, and then implementing it with the command pattern.

3. Implementing Unit Testing within Silverlight

3. Small Demo app { Pulling data from a service and displaying it using this pattern, with tests }

4. Small Demo app { Pulling data and traversing through a set of pages }

5. Pulling data through a feed and rockin' out with our * out

  The list will grow and I will start to add to it as I keep going, but this is basically it. I am going to follow a post/screencast type of scenario with this, so you can read and view the code, then watch a video on the whole thing unfolding...that sounds like a good plan.

  If there is anything that you want to see, then hit me up and I'll do my best to get into it! And of course, make sure you grab the RSS feed so that you can keep up to date on the breaking changes.

w00t! I love this Silverlight shit!

Ryan

Friday, December 05 2008 | Silverlight Tips