We’re not halfway through our week of WPF, and I’m pretty sure at this point that you have an all right grounding in the basics of WPF & PowerShell, but so far, the scripts haven’t really been very much like most PowerShell scripts, and the UIs have not been like most WPF UIs. The scripts have been a little odd because they haven’t really made use of a common convention of PowerShell… the pipeline. The WPF examples have also been a little verbose because they do not include any XAML.<\/p>\n
XAML is an XML format you can use to write user interfaces that use WPF. Because WPF is very property oriented, it is often more concise to write an interface using XAML than it is to write it by setting properties in PowerShell. XAML also has many developer tools, such as Microsoft Blend and Visual Studio, to help design your application. However, XAML cannot contain event handlers. In order to make writing interfaces in XAML easier, I’ve written Show-Control. a function that takes a control, shape, or XAML document from the pipeline and a dictionary of ScriptBlocks as the event handlers. Show-Control is a little large (~ 90 lines), so lets walk through how we can make the examples shorter with XAML & Show-Control. Show-Control’s source code will be at the bottom.<\/p>\n
Here are all of the examples from Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3, redone to use Show-Control<\/p>\n
Large Font Hello World (was 7 lines, now 1 line):<\/strong><\/p>\n “<Label xmlns=’http:\/\/schemas.microsoft.com\/winfx\/2006\/xaml\/presentation’<\/a> FontSize=’24’>Hello World<\/Label>” | Show-Control <\/p>\n InkCanvas (was 7 lines, now 1 line):<\/strong><\/p>\n “<InkCanvas xmlns=’http:\/\/schemas.microsoft.com\/winfx\/2006\/xaml\/presentation’ \/>” | Show-Control <\/p>\n Random Circle (was 9 lines, now 6 lines)<\/strong><\/p>\n $circleSize = Get-Random -min 200 -max 450 Slider (was 8 lines, now 1 line)<\/strong><\/p>\n “<Slider xmlns=’http:\/\/schemas.microsoft.com\/winfx\/2006\/xaml\/presentation’ Minimum=’1′ Maximum=’10’\/>”| Show-Control <\/p>\n Label & Textbox (was 11 lines, now 6 lines) <\/strong><\/p>\n @” Click & Close (was 6 lines, now 3 lines)<\/strong><\/p>\n @”
$color = “Red”, “Green”,”Blue”,”Orange”,”Yellow” | Get-Random
“<Ellipse xmlns=’http:\/\/schemas.microsoft.com\/winfx\/2006\/xaml\/presentation’<\/a>
Width=’$circleSize’
Height=’$circleSize’
Fill=’$color’ \/>” | Show-Control<\/p>\n
<StackPanel xmlns=’http:\/\/schemas.microsoft.com\/winfx\/2006\/xaml\/presentation’<\/a>>
<Label FontSize=’20’>Type Something<\/Label>
<TextBox \/>
<\/StackPanel>
“@ | Show-Control<\/p>\n
<Button FontSize=’20’ xmlns=’http:\/\/schemas.microsoft.com\/winfx\/2006\/xaml\/presentation’<\/a>>Click Me<\/Button>
“@ | Show-Control @{“Click” = {$window.close()}}<\/p>\n