MVVM Toolkit for WPF and Silverlight

Laurent Bugnion has created a toolkit for creating MVVM applications. He says:

“To make development of WPF and Silverlight applications according to the Model-View-ViewModel pattern easier, I have put together a small toolkit which should speed up the creation of such applications by automating certain tasks.”

Here’s the URL: http://geekswithblogs.net/lbugnion/archive/2009/06/14/mvvm-lsquolightrsquo-toolkit-for-wpf-and-silverlight.aspx

ASP.NET MVC + Silverlight? Try MVVM + Silverlight in stead!

I have been thinking about how it would be cool to use the new ASP.NET MVC project type with Silverlight as the “View”, and a quick google gives some interesting results.

Some attempts have been made to use Silverlight as the view in MVC:

In this one http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2009/02/09/silverlight-as-a-view-in-aspnet-mvc.aspx the approach is to start with a Silverlight application, and then select ASP.NET MVC as the container-web for the Silverlight views. But it seems that this approach has some problems (just read the comments).

In this approach http://blogs.msdn.com/jowardel/archive/2009/03/09/asp-net-mvc-silverlight.aspx, one starts out with an MVC web project, and then put Silverligh controls into the views. This solution is not usable, because it relies on using a property (some parameters) that is no longer accessible in the release version of MVC.

The solution is: Don’t use MVC, Use MVVM!
From the comments from the first one, it seems MVVM (http://msdn.microsoft.com/nb-no/magazine/dd458800(en-us).aspx) is the way to go (Model-View-ViewModel).

Jonas Follesøe also have some good stuff:
http://jonas.follesoe.no/YouCardRevisitedImplementingDependencyInjectionInSilverlight.aspx

And this discussion provides some good links:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/375301/should-i-use-the-model-view-viewmodel-mvvm-pattern-in-silverlight-projects

ScottGu's Silverlight 2.0 Tutorial

I am trying to work my way through Scott Gu's http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/pages/silverlight-tutorial-part-3-using-networking-to-retrieve-data-and-populate-a-datagrid.aspx tutorial.

The tutorial contacts a service using a WebClient.

Someone called David has posted a question regarding him getting the error "The remote server returned an error: (403) Forbidden.".

The answer to the question is to add this line: Service.Headers.Add("user-agent", "Silverlight Sample App");

However, the Headers have no "Add" method any more: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.webheadercollection_members(VS.95).aspx.

In stead I think you need to use the bold italic line in the source below:

        private void SearchBtn_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            string topic = txtSearchTopic.Text;
            string diggUrl = string.Format("http://services.digg.com/stories/topic/{0}", topic);

            WebClient diggService = new WebClient();
            diggService.DownloadStringCompleted += new DownloadStringCompletedEventHandler(diggService_DownloadStringCompleted);
            diggService.Headers[HttpRequestHeader.UserAgent] = "Silverlight Sample App";
            diggService.DownloadStringAsync(new Uri(diggUrl));
        }

But this doesn't work either, because UserAgent is a restricted header that cannot be set. Attempting to set it will throw an exception:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.webheadercollection(VS.95).aspx

So is there any way of making the tutorial work? Am I barking up the wrong tree? If I find out I'll post the answer :)

Creating your first Silverlight 2.0 application

Good article with some videos that show you how to get started with Silverlight 2.0 in Visual Studio 2008: http://visualstudiomagazine.com/columns/article.aspx?editorialsid=2644