UWP Tip #24 - Get Started Building Windows UI XAML with XAML Studio

XAML Studio was recently made available as a Microsoft Garage project without much fanfare. You may have heard of it if you're a regular viewer of the On .NET show on Channel 9. XAML Studio's creator, Michael Hawker, joined Jeremy Likness to discuss the project last week.

What Is XAML Studio

XAML Studio aims to provide Windows UI developers with a quick way to create and prototype XAML markup for Windows. If you miss old lightweight XAML editors like XamlPad, you should install XAML Studio today. These are a few of the features already available in this early version of the tool.

• Live Preview
• Live Binding
• Binding Debugging
• Data Context Editor
• Auto-Save (with Restore)
• IntelliSense
• Documentation Toolbox with Links to MS Docs
• Alignment Guides
• Namespace Helpers

Getting Started

You can search for XAML Studio in the Microsoft Store and install it from there or use this handy link. When you open the app for the first time, you'll be greeted by a Welcome screen like this.

XAML Editor

If you have an existing WinUI XAML file you would like to try, you can use the Open File link. Let's get started today by clicking the New File link to create and start editing your first XAML file.

The new XAML file is a Windows Page containing a Grid with a 2-line TextBlock. Let's start slow and the Run text of each line a little bit to read "Get Started with XAML Studio on UWP Tips" and "Check out the live preview.". You'll notice that the live preview is exactly that... live. The text in the preview will refresh as you change it in the editor.

IntelliSense and Live Preview

Let's test out the IntelliSense by adding a couple more controls to the page. We'll switch out the Grid for a StackPanel with the default vertical orientation and add a Button and another TextBlock.

Settings

The IntelliSense is quite nice, but I think the default Live Preview refresh interval is a little fast. The bright pink error messages about invalid markup are distracting while working in the editor. You can either disable auto-compilation or edit the interval in the app's settings. The default interval is to compile after 0.8 seconds of inactivity in the editor. I updated mine to 2 seconds.

You should take some time to explore all of the XAML Studio settings as you're getting familiar with the app.

Documentation Toolbox

Something else you should explore is the Documentation Toolbox in the left panel.

Here you can view all of the WinUI XAML controls available to the editor, complete with little info icons that link to the Microsoft Docs online documentation. The control name and namespace appear in the list for each item. If you have controls that you frequently use, you can add them to your favorites so they always appear at the top of the list.

Data Binding

Want to add some dynamic content to your page without coding up your model, view model or connecting to a live data source? You can create a mocked up data source with some JSON data in the Data Source pane on the left.

For this prototype, I grabbed some sample JSON data from one of Adobe's sites. This data contains an array of donuts, each with its own array of batters and toppings and some other properties. It's a handy bit of small, yet semi-complex data.

From the Data Source pane, you can save your JSON, open other JSON data files, or connect to a Remote Data Context. Using a remote data context is as simple as entering a REST Url that returns valid JSON data. The returned data will populate your Data Source window and can be saved for later use.

Here is my XAML markup from the screenshot above with bindings added for the donut JSON data.

<StackPanel Padding="40" DataContext="{Binding}">
     <TextBlock Margin="8">
         <Run FontSize="24" Foreground="#FFFC5185">Get Started with XAML Studio on UWP Tips</Run><LineBreak/>
         <Run>Check out the live preview.</Run>
     </TextBlock>
    <Button Content="I Do Nothing" Margin="8"/>

    <ListView ItemsSource="{Binding}">
         <ListView.ItemTemplate>
             <DataTemplate>
                 <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal">
                     <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=id}" Margin="4"/>
                     <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=type}" Margin="4"/>
                     <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=name}" Margin="4"/>
                     <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=rating}" Margin="4"/>
                 </StackPanel>
             </DataTemplate>
         </ListView.ItemTemplate>
     </ListView>
</StackPanel>

These binding expressions are all valid except for one. Want to quickly know which of your bindings is invalid? Switch to the Debug Bindings pane and turn on the Debug toggle.

After debug is enabled on bindings, a list of the binding expressions will display in the pane with a 'Successful' or 'NotBound' status next to the binding target. A timestamp of the last bound time will display with any bindings that have been successful. In addition, the binding expressions in the code editor will be highlighted to indicate their status, making it easier to navigate to the failed bindings.

In my case, I tried to bind to a "rating" property, which does not exist on the donut array items in the JSON data.

Next Steps

That's all we're going to explore in this intro to XAML Studio. Next time we'll dive a little deeper into remote bindings, bind some more complex controls, and see how easily we can take our prototype XAML over to a real UWP application in Visual Studio.

Go check out XAML Studio today and be sure to provide feedback to Michael on Twitter!

Happy XAMLing!

del.icio.us Tags: xaml studio,xaml,winui,uwp,data binding,json