Binding WPF menu items to WPF Tab Control Items collection

Question

I have a WPF Menu and a Tab control. I would like the list of menu items to be generated from the collection of TabItems on my tab control. I am binding my tab control to a collection to generate the TabItems. I have a TabItem style that uses a ContentPresenter to display the TabItem text in a TextBlock. When I bind the tab items to my menu the menu items are blank. I am using a Style Setter to set the Menu Item name, but I am not sure what property of the TabItem I would use to set the MenuItem text. Is there a workaround for my scenario? Is it possible to bind to the Header property of the tab item, when I do not know the number of tabs in advance? Below is a copy of my xaml declarations. Tab Control and items:

<DataTemplate x:Key="ClosableTabItemTemplate">
        <DockPanel HorizontalAlignment="Stretch">
            <Button
        Command="{Binding Path=CloseWorkSpaceCommand}"
        Content="X"
        Cursor="Hand"
        DockPanel.Dock="Right"
        Focusable="False"
        FontFamily="Courier" 
        FontSize="9"
        FontWeight="Bold"  
        Margin="10,1,0,0"
        Padding="0"
        VerticalContentAlignment="Bottom"
        Width="16" Height="16"
        Background="Red"
        />
            <ContentPresenter HorizontalAlignment="Center"
        Content="{Binding Path=DisplayName}">
                <ContentPresenter.Resources>
                    <Style TargetType="{x:Type TextBlock}"/>
                </ContentPresenter.Resources>
            </ContentPresenter>
    </DockPanel>
    </DataTemplate>
    <DataTemplate x:Key="WorkspacesTemplate">
        <TabControl
      IsSynchronizedWithCurrentItem="True" 
      ItemsSource="{Binding}" 
      ItemTemplate="{StaticResource ClosableTabItemTemplate}"
      Margin="10"
      Background="#4C4C4C"/>
    </DataTemplate>

My Menu and partial style listing

//I am not sure which value am I suppose to use, since I am not using header

<Menu Background="Transparent">
    <MenuItem Style="{StaticResource TabMenuButtonStyle}"
                        ItemsSource="{Binding RelativeSource={RelativeSource FindAncestor, 
                        AncestorType={x:Type TabControl}}, Path=Items}"
                        ItemContainerStyle="{StaticResource TabMenuItem}">
    </MenuItem>
</Menu>

William William · Accepted Answer · 2010-06-12T21:23:34

Create the following style and bind Header property to display property in ViewModel

<Style TargetType="{x:Type TabItem}">
        <Setter Property="Header" Value="{Binding PropertyInViewModel}" />
 </Style>

Binding WPF menu items to WPF Tab Control Items collection

1 Answers