#396 – Rich ListBox Content Using Data Binding, part II

This post continues the example of displaying information about a series of movies in a ListBox, using data binding.

Last time, we showed the code for a Movie class, which stored data for a single movie.

The next step is to create some Movie instances and put them in a list, which we will then bind the ListBox to.  We start by adding a property containing a list of movies, which we will bind to.

        public ObservableCollection<Movie> MovieList { get; protected set; }

Next, we’ll add some code to set the data context of the main window to itself–which allows data binding GUI elements in the window to properties in the code-behind class that represents the window.

We also add code to the constructor to populate the list of movies.

        public MainWindow()
        {
            this.InitializeComponent();

            // Set data context of main window to itself, allowing to bind
            // elements in the GUI to properties in the code-behind.
            this.DataContext = this;

            // Populate movie list
            MovieList = new ObservableCollection<Movie>();
            MovieList.Add(new Movie("King Kong", 1933, new Uri(@"..\Images\KingKong-1933.png", UriKind.Relative), "Bruce Cabot", "Fay Wray", "Merian C. Cooper"));
            MovieList.Add(new Movie("The Gay Divorcee", 1934, new Uri(@"..\Images\GayDiv-1934.png", UriKind.Relative), "Fred Astaire", "Ginger Rogers", "Mark Sandrich"));
            MovieList.Add(new Movie("Captain Blood", 1935, new Uri(@"..\Images\CptBlood-1935.png", UriKind.Relative), "Errol Flynn", "Olivia de Havilland", "Michael Curtiz"));
            MovieList.Add(new Movie("Modern Times", 1936, new Uri(@"..\Images\ModTimes-1936.png", UriKind.Relative), "Charlie Chaplin", "Paulette Goddard", "Charlie Chaplin"));
            MovieList.Add(new Movie("Topper", 1937, new Uri(@"..\Images\Topper-1937.png", UriKind.Relative), "Cary Grant", "Constance Bennett", "Norman Z. McLeod"));
            OnPropertyChanged("MovieList");
        }