Cascading styles in WPF (a la CSS)

Question

is there a way to specify something like this in WPF:

CSS:

#someSpan input { color: #f1f1f1; }
or
span input { color: #f1f1f1; }

meaning, i'd like to have all TextBlock elements within container follow x style, w/out having to apply the style to each textblock.

just to clarify, i need to do something like this in WPF.

i know about the BasedOn attribute of a style.. but that's not quite what i'm looking for here

looking for something like this

 <Style x:Key="FileItem"  TargetType="{x:Type #SomeContainer TextBlock}">

or maybe within SomeContainer, add a TextBlock style that will apply to all of its textblocks

Does this solve the problem? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5745001/xaml-combine-styles — Steve Greatrex, Nov 03 '11 at 12:53

score 10 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 03 '11 at 15:12

You can do that, you just need to nest styles, e.g.

<Style TargetType="{x:Type Border}">
    <Style.Resources>
        <Style TargetType="{x:Type TextBox}">
            <!-- ... -->
        </Style>
    <Style.Resources>
</Style>

This allows you to style TextBoxes in Borders, elements however can only have one style applied to them, so having parallel "rules" is not going to work as well.

Steve Greatrex · Accepted Answer · 2011-11-03T13:09:44.837

6

Regarding the last part of your question, if you want to apply a style to all TextBlocks within a particular element, just put the Style within that elements resources:

<TextBlock /> <!-- unaffected -->

<Grid>
    <Grid.Resources>
        <Style TargetType="TextBlock">
            <!-- ... -->
        </Style>
    </Grid.Resources>

    <TextBlock /> <!-- will be styled -->
</Grid>

If you have your styles stored in a separate ResourceDictionary then you can "import" them all for a particular element by merging resource dictionaries:

<Grid>
    <Grid.Resources>
        <ResourceDictionary>
            <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
                    <ResourceDictionary Source="/Resources/MyOtherStyles.xaml" />
            </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
        </ResourceDictionary>
    </Grid.Resources>

    <TextBlock /> <!-- will be styled -->
</Grid>

edited Nov 03 '11 at 13:09

answered Nov 03 '11 at 12:55

Steve Greatrex

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good point.. though i have all my styles defined in a separate .xaml.. i suppose i can still point the above definition to a static resource... – Sonic Soul Nov 03 '11 at 12:59
1

yep, this pretty much does what i need.. however i still wish i didn't have to create local overrides for every element... – Sonic Soul Nov 03 '11 at 13:04
1

See my update - it's still not perfect, but you can use merged resource dictionaries to import a lot of styles at once – Steve Greatrex Nov 03 '11 at 13:10

Cascading styles in WPF (a la CSS)

2 Answers2