ContentControl

Common Properties

Property	Description
Content	The content to display in the control

Reference

ContentControl

Source code

ContentControl.cs

Display content

At its simplest, a ContentControl displays the data assigned to its Content property.

For example:

<ContentControl Content="Hello World!"/>

Will display the string "Hello World!". The Content property is the control's default property and so the above example can also be written as:

<ContentControl>Hello World!</ContentControl>

If you assign a control to a ContentControl then it will display the control, for example:

<ContentControl>
  <Button>Click Me!</Button>
</ContentControl>

Display content with templates

So far so uninteresting. Where ContentControl becomes useful is in tandem with data binding and data templates. By setting the ContentTemplate property one can specify how the data in the Content property is displayed. For example given the following view models:

namespace Example
{
    public class MainWindowViewModel : ViewModelBase
    {
        object content = new Student("Jane", "Deer");

        public object Content
        {
            get => content;
            set => this.RaiseAndSetIfChanged(ref content, value);
        }
    }

    public class Student
    {
        public Student(string firstName, string lastName)
        {
            FirstName = firstName;
            LastName = lastName;
        }

        public string FirstName { get; }
        public string LastName { get; }
    }
}

Note: The following examples assume an instance of MainWindowViewModel is assigned to the Window's DataContext. See the section on DataContext for more information.

We can display the student's first and last name in a ContentControl using the ContentTemplate property:

<Window xmlns="https://github.com/avaloniaui">
  <ContentControl Content="{Binding Content}">
    <ContentControl.ContentTemplate>
      <DataTemplate>
        <Grid ColumnDefinitions="Auto,Auto" RowDefinitions="Auto,Auto">
          <TextBlock Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="0">First Name:</TextBlock>
          <TextBlock Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="1" Text="{Binding FirstName}"/>
          <TextBlock Grid.Row="1" Grid.Column="0">Last Name:</TextBlock>
          <TextBlock Grid.Row="1" Grid.Column="1" Text="{Binding LastName}"/>
        </Grid>
      </DataTemplate>
    </ContentControl.ContentTemplate>
  </ContentControl>
</Window>

For more information see the data templates section.