Has it ever been possible to bind to a field in WPF?

Question

Someone suggested in another question that they, at some point, were able to bind a value to a field in WPF.

I know that this is not a supported scenario (and personally I have only seen binding work with properties), but is it even technically possible?

Of course it works. That's the whole point of data binding. What seems to be your particular problem? — Stephen Chung, Mar 22 '11 at 05:29
Oh. Sorry. I misread. I mixed up "property" with "field". Fields are not possible, I believe, which causes no end of dismay for programmers, especially before auto-implement properties. — Stephen Chung, Mar 22 '11 at 05:47

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 22 '11 at 05:34

No. Binding in WPF uses either a PropertyDescriptor or the Dependency Property mechanism, which only works on Properties.

(Technical note here: A Dependency Property is technically sort of a field - it's defined as a field, then registered with the DP system, though, and treated more like a property, so I would still call it a property... The field itself doesn't actually store the data in the case of a DP.)

Has it ever been possible to bind to a field in WPF?

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