Why is my WPF key binding to a navigation command not working?

Question

I tried this:

<Page.InputBindings>
    <KeyBinding Command="{Binding NavigationCommands.BrowseBack}" Key="Esc"/>
</Page.InputBindings>

And this:

<Page.InputBindings>
    <KeyBinding Command="NavigationCommands.BrowseBack" Key="Esc"/>
</Page.InputBindings>

But still the navigation doesn't go back when I press escape. How do I make this key binding work?

Are you debugging this in Visual Studio? If so, when you open up the page, do you see any binding errors in the output window? — jmgardn2, Sep 29 '18 at 13:29
I don't see any binding errors related to commands; I set Data Binding tracing to Information. — ekolis, Sep 29 '18 at 16:50
Actually, I believe the Key property should be `Escape` not `Esc`. Give that a try — jmgardn2, Oct 01 '18 at 00:30
Nope, Esc was suggested by IntelliSense, and Escape didn't work either... — ekolis, Oct 02 '18 at 01:15

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 29 '18 at 08:24

1

It is most probably because the page is not in focus. I guess you load the page in a frame. To check if it is generally working, click anywhere in the page and hit esc.

Possible solutions i know are: 1) use focus manager on load of page to set focus in the page (and not have focus on the window)

2) set the binding not on the page but on the window. This can be tricky architectur-wise. Because if you load different pages you have to load and unload that event if is page dependent.

Hope that helps.

answered Sep 29 '18 at 08:24

Jan

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How do I use FocusManager to set focus to the page? – ekolis Sep 29 '18 at 16:51
by setting the focused element to any element in that page. It may be possible to set it to the page itself. see here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.windows.input.focusmanager.focusedelement?view=netframework-4.7.2 and here the first two answers: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11246554/how-to-set-autofocus-only-in-xaml – Jan Sep 29 '18 at 19:04
Nope, I tried `FocusManager.FocusedElement="{Binding RelativeSource={RelativeSource Self}}"` in the and that didn't help... – ekolis Oct 02 '18 at 01:19
try it on a different element i.e. a textbox. – Jan Oct 02 '18 at 04:46
If I click a button then the key binding works; how would I bind it to a button? I tried `{Binding RelativeSource={RelativeSource Self}, Path=btnShipStats}` and `{Binding Path=btnShipStats}` but neither of those worked; I have to manually click the button to focus it. – ekolis Oct 06 '18 at 18:09
Oh, I just put `btnShipStats.Focus();` in the page constructor and that worked! – ekolis Oct 06 '18 at 18:10
if you use relative source=self, then you put it directly on the button in xaml – Jan Oct 06 '18 at 18:11

Why is my WPF key binding to a navigation command not working?

1 Answers1