Silverlight 4 and Xml namespaces

Probably one of the most irritating issues when dealing with Xaml in Silverlight was the pain of creating all the Xmlns namespace entries for the namespaces and assemblies you wanted to use in your Xaml.  The following is an example of what you would have to do in Sivlerlight 3:

<UserControl
x:Class="Designer.FormView"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
xmlns:radGrid="clr-namespace:Telerik.Windows.Controls;assembly=Telerik.Windows.Controls.GridView"
xmlns:radDock="clr-namespace:Telerik.Windows.Controls;assembly=Telerik.Windows.Controls.Docking"
xmlns:radNav="clr-namespace:Telerik.Windows.Controls;assembly=Telerik.Windows.Controls.Navigation"
xmlns:radDrag="clr-namespace:Telerik.Windows.Controls.DragDrop;assembly=Telerik.Windows.Controls"
xmlns:radPrimitives="clr-namespace:Telerik.Windows.Controls.Primitives;assembly=Telerik.Windows.Controls"
xmlns:dc="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Controls;assembly=System.Windows.Controls.Data.DataForm.Toolkit"
xmlns:toolkit="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Controls;assembly=System.Windows.Controls.Toolkit"
xmlns:ctls="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Controls;assembly=System.Windows.Controls"
xmlns:data="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Controls;assembly=System.Windows.Controls.Data"
xmlns:input="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Controls;assembly=System.Windows.Controls.Input"
xmlns:navMap="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Navigation;assembly=System.Windows.Controls.Navigation"
xmlns:nav="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Controls;assembly=System.Windows.Controls.Navigation"
>
...
</UserControl>

Now in Silverlight 4, you can now do the following:

<UserControl
x:Class="Designer.FormView"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
xmlns:rad="http://schemas.telerik.com/2008/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:toolkit="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation/toolkit"
xmlns:sdk="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation/sdk"
>
...
</UserControl>

So if you want the same features and power in your own library, all you need to do is provide the XmlnsDefinition attribute. This attribute lives in the System.Xaml assembly.

If you would like to do this to your own assemblies, you would something like to the following to your AssemblyInfo.cs file:

[assembly: XmlnsDefinition(Constants.XmlNamespace, "Core.UI.View")]
[assembly: XmlnsDefinition(Constants.XmlNamespace, "Core.UI.Controls")]
[assembly: XmlnsDefinition(Constants.XmlNamespace, "Core.UI.Interactivity")]


[assembly: XmlnsPrefix(Constants.XmlNamespace, "core")]

internal static class Constants
{
    internal const string XmlNamespace = "http://schemas.mywebsite.com/core";
}

Finally, you would access you new namespace definitions with the following:

...
xmlns:core="http://schemas.mywebsite.com/core"
...

With this firmly tucked in your toolbelt, you are ready to make your developer’s lives much easier and nicer to deal with. If you have multiple assemblies, just use the same XmlNamespace so that they will all show up correctly.

Hope this helps…

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