By Kevin Hamsley, on September 16th, 2013

Well hope that you were aware of Silverlight 5 Beta release announcement today and its latest feature. In this post we will discuss about XAML binding debugging ,a new feature available in Silverlight5 .Be sure that you read my last line carefully its XAML Data Binding debugging  not XAML debugging .

For any data driven application with declarative data binding, with in XAML ,this brand new feature is the significant in many ways.

Personally remember most of the time for used to skip XAML way of binding as it lacked debugging feature.Now with Silverlight 5 my previous approach will surely take a back seat and will allow me to consider both ways equally.

Makes sure that you have downloaded latest version Silverlight Toolkit SDK. If not download from here .

Also make sure that you are running on VisualStudio SP1.

The XAML Data binding

The example demonstrated here implement basic XAML data binding with DomainDataSource control , lets look at the XAML binding of one of the controls.

Nothing fancy , simple binding.

The XAML Debugging

As of now the XAML allows to apply breakpoint on Binding syntax only.Once break point applied ,it hits the breakpoint when ever push and pull triggered for that control.The image bellow shows the breakpoint with in XAML.

The XAML editor will not allow you to set breakpoint anywhere else other than Binding syntax. Once Breakpoint set start the application and wait for the compiler to hit it .

You can find the debug information from Local tab.

The information shows up a BindingState object holding complete binding context information of the control.as in above image , the BindingState value is UpdatingTarget so this way it shows that the binding is pushing data to control.

Going deeper into the debugging information it shows complete picture on the nature of data and binding.

Now another interesting fact , on TwoWay binding scenario once you change the data , for .e.g the FirstName control ,

the breakpoint again gets a hit as the binding source is getting updated .And the debug information shows the Binding state as Updating Source status.

and the CurrentItem Information shows up the editing item detail and its properties.

Conclusion

Hope this post helps you to know the cool new feature of Silverlight5, Try it and extract information you need to know right from XAML. Keep commenting and keep your suggestions flowing. More to follow on Sillverlight5 Beta new features  .