Hosting a Windows Control in WPF Application

In my previous article, I demonstrated how to host a WPF control within a windows application and in this tutorial I will show how to host a windows form control within a WPF application. To do so, I invite you to follow this walkthrough.

Walkthrough:

1. Open Visual Studio 2008 and create a new project, a WPF application and name it myWpfApplication
   
   
   
   Figure1
   
   
2. The new WPF form called Window1 appears in addition to the XAML code editor
   
   
   
   Figure 2
   
   
3. Expand the project node in the solution explorer and right click the references menu item, then click add reference context menu item.
   
   
   
   Figure 3
   
   
4. Select the .Net tab then add WindowsFormsIntegration assembly reference to the solution.
   
   
   
   Figure 4
   
   
5. Then add another reference, it will be our well known Windows forms assembly
   
   
   
   Figure 5
   
   
6. Now, as the references are added, switch to the C# code by right clicking the Window1 and clicking the view code context menu item
   
   Do add the two namespaces
   
   using System.Windows.Forms;
   using System.Windows.Forms.Integration;
   
   
7. Expand the toolbox and go to the bottom, you find there an element witch called WindowsFormHost
   
   
8. Drag and drop it into the WPF window or simply add this couple of lines of XAML code into the XAML editor
   
   

   <my:WindowsFormsHost Margin="18,20,38,73" Name="windowsFormsHost1">

   </my:WindowsFormsHost>
   
   
9. Take a look on the XAML code, it will look like this
   
   

   <Window x:Class="myWpfApplication.Window1"

   xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"

   xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"

   xmlns:wf="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Forms.Integration;assembly=WindowsFormsIntegration"

   Title="Window1" Height="300" Width="300" xmlns:my="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Forms.Integration;assembly=WindowsFormsIntegration"

   Loaded="Window_Loaded">

   <Grid>

   <WindowsFormsHost Height="100" Margin="39,27,39,0" Name="windowsFormsHost1" VerticalAlignment="Top" >

   </WindowsFormsHost>

   </Grid>

   </Window>
   
   
10. Within the WindowsFormHost tag, add those lines:
    
    

    <WindowsFormsHost Height="100" Margin="39,27,39,0" Name="windowsFormsHost1" VerticalAlignment="Top" >

    <wf:ElementHost BackColor="Beige">

    <Button Background="Bisque" Margin="39,27,39,27" Click="Button_Click">Click me please!</Button>

    </wf:ElementHost>

    </WindowsFormsHost>
    
    
11. Now, switch to the code behind zone, you find there the button click event handler related stub, then implement it as follows
    
    

    private void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)

    {

    System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox.Show("My parent is the hosted window form","Message");

    }
    
    
12. Do run the application and observe
    
    
    
    Figure 6

That's it.

Good Dotneting!!!