I was writing some code today, and decided it would be real nice if I could use an ObservableDictionary to allow the possible binding of items to a WPF/Silverlight control. Of course, I was dismayed to find that Microsoft (once again) failed to anticipate the needs of (quite possibly) the laziest programmer ever to stop around in Visual Studio - there was no such collection in .Net. Lookout google, here I come.
I was pleased my search was a relatively short one, and in the interest of saving you the time of conducting an identical search, I present you with my results - a sort of one-stop shopping experience, if you will.
The first link provides the article discussing the basic ObservableDictionary:
http://drwpf.com/blog/2007/09/16/can-i-bind-my-itemscontrol-to-a-dictionary/[
^]
And the second link allows you to add XML serialization:
http://weblogs.asp.net/pwelter34/archive/2006/05/03/444961.aspx[
^]
As with anything on the internet, I don't know how long these things will be around, so if I were you, I'd scoop the code as soon as humanly possible. I'[m working on an article that actually uses some of this code, so eventually, you'll be able to get it here as well (I'll get the original authors' permissions before I do that, though).
I've been paid as a programmer since 1982 with experience in Pascal, and C++ (both self-taught), and began writing Windows programs in 1991 using Visual C++ and MFC. In the 2nd half of 2007, I started writing C# Windows Forms and ASP.Net applications, and have since done WPF, Silverlight, WCF, web services, and Windows services.
My weakest point is that my moments of clarity are too brief to hold a meaningful conversation that requires more than 30 seconds to complete. Thankfully, grunts of agreement are all that is required to conduct most discussions without committing to any particular belief system.