Using MVVM Design Pattern in Windows Forms
30-Dec-2023 1 Comments
The MVVM Design Pattern is mainly used in XAML enviroments like WPF, UWP, WinUI, Xamarin Forms and MAUI, because they support databinding between Controls and Models but also between Buttons and Commands.
In .NET 8 it is possible to implement the MVVM Design Pattern in Windows Forms apps. It uses a new data binding engine which was in preview with .NET 7, and is now fully enabled in .NET 8. This new engine is modeled after WPF, which makes it easier to implement MVVM design principles. Time to write a blog post about it.
For this post I have written a simple demo Solution containing 3 projects. The ModelsLibrary project contains a ViewModel and is referenced by a Windows Forms and WPF project. I have published this solution in this GitHub repository.
The UI of the Windows Forms and WPF apps are very simple. It shows the value of a Counter and has an Increment button to increment the value by 1. Simular to the Counter sample page of a Blazor app.
