Templates in WPF : Comprehensive Guide

This post provides a comprehensive guide about the templates in WPF. It will give you the details about the various types of templates in WPF, purposes of that template, and give details idea how to use it in your WPF application.

Getting Started

A template is a way to define the visual structure and behaviour of a control or content. It lets you customize the appearance of controls without changing their logic or behaviour.

In WPF, each control has its own default template associated with it and can be modified the default associated template using Style. In my previous post, I have explained what WPF Style is. please visit once you know more about the WPF Style

There are mainly three types of templates in WPF:

1. Control Template
2. Data Template
3. Panel Template

Templates in WPF

WPF Control Template

The Control Template in WPF, enables you to customize the default appearance and behaviour of the WPF control. This can be achieved by setting the dependency property “Template” to an instance of Control Template. To know more about the WPF control template, visit my previous post by clicking on the link.

Example

 <Style TargetType="Button">  
  <!--Set to true to not get any properties from the themes.-->  
  <Setter Property="OverridesDefaultStyle" Value="True"/>  
  <Setter Property="Template">  
   <Setter.Value>  
    <ControlTemplate TargetType="Button">  
     <Grid>  
      <Ellipse Fill="{TemplateBinding Background}"/>  
      <ContentPresenter HorizontalAlignment="Center"  
               VerticalAlignment="Center"/>  
     </Grid>  
    </ControlTemplate>  
   </Setter.Value>  
  </Setter>  
 </Style>  

WPF Data Template

A DataTemplate is used to define how the data is displayed in the UI, especially when you're working with controls like ListBox, ComboBox, DataGrid, TreeView, etc. It allows you to create a custom visual representation of your data objects.

Example

 <Window x:Class="WpfApp.MainWindow"  
     xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"  
     xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"  
     Title="DataTemplate Example" Height="350" Width="525">  
   <Grid>  
     <ListBox Name="PeopleListBox">  
       <ListBox.ItemTemplate>  
         <DataTemplate>  
           <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal">  
             <TextBlock Text="{Binding Name}" Margin="0,0,10,0"/>  
             <TextBlock Text="(" Foreground="Gray"/>  
             <TextBlock Text="{Binding Age}" Foreground="Gray"/>  
             <TextBlock Text=")" Foreground="Gray"/>  
           </StackPanel>  
         </DataTemplate>  
       </ListBox.ItemTemplate>  
     </ListBox>  
   </Grid>  
 </Window>  

Panel Control Template in WPF

Technically, WPF doesn’t have a PanelTemplate class like it does for ControlTemplate or DataTemplate. However, when people refer to a "Panel Template", they usually mean customizing or controlling the layout panel used inside a control — especially for controls that have a collection of items like ItemsControl, ListBox, ListView, etc. This is done using ItemsPanel Template

The Panel Template in WPF defines which layout panel (like StackPanel, WrapPanel, UniformGrid, etc.) should be used to arrange the items in an ItemsControl.

Example

 <ItemsControl ItemsSource="{Binding MyItems}">  
   <ItemsControl.ItemsPanel>  
     <ItemsPanelTemplate>  
       <WrapPanel Orientation="Horizontal"/>  
     </ItemsPanelTemplate>  
   </ItemsControl.ItemsPanel>  
   <ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>  
     <DataTemplate>  
       <Border Background="LightBlue" Margin="5" Padding="10">  
         <TextBlock Text="{Binding}" />  
       </Border>  
     </DataTemplate>  
   </ItemsControl.ItemTemplate>  
 </ItemsControl>  

Common Panels You Can Use

1. StackPanel (default for ItemsControl)
2. WrapPanel (wraps items when there's no more space)
3. UniformGrid (equal-sized cells) 
4. Grid (flexible rows/columns) 
5. VirtualizingStackPanel (improves performance on large lists)

Above are the basics examples but lot of things we can be done using these templates in WPF. I hope this helps.

Thanks