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Chapter 8: Building Desktop Applications with WPF 247
using m_ctx, which is a field, both the Window_Loaded method and the UpdateButton_
Click method are using the same object instance. When making changes in the Grid,
those changes are saved in the Order objects for the changed rows. The Order objects
notify MyShopDataContext that they have changed, which is a service of LINQ to SQL.
The UpdateButton_Click method uses m_ctx, which is the MyShopDataContext that
knows about the changes to the Order objects. Calling SubmitChanges on m_ctx saves all
changes to the database.
You might need to read the preceding paragraph more than one time to understand
how this is working. If it’s still fuzzy, it might be helpful to review the language chapters
earlier in this book to understand how objects are instantiated and used, and review
Chapter 7 to ensure you understand the data manipulation picture.
Summary
While there is much more to learn about WPF, this is a beginner’s guide and intended to
give you the essentials so that you can begin moving in the right direction. Y
ou should
now be able to create a new WPF project. You learned about layout controls and how they
allow you to manage how controls appear on your form. A section explains the windows
involved in working with controls. While there are many controls you can use that ship
with both WPF and many third-party products, remember that the concepts are relatively
the same for using the controls: drag and drop, and configure properties. Most applications
work with data, so this chapter builds upon what you know about LINQ to SQL and
shows you how to apply this data management knowledge to create user interfaces that
users can work with to manage their data.
This chapter introduces you to working with desktop applications, which are still very
necessary and popular. However, a lot of today’s applications are written for the Internet.
The next chapter shows you how to build Web applications with ASP.NET.