Caliburn.Micro 3.1.0

A small feature and bug fix release to clean out some of the backlog before 4.0.0.

Included are the following

• #439 Fixes up an issue using commas in constant values cm:Message.Attach="ShowTitle('One, Two, Three')"
• #432 Stop calling InitializeCompontent on Xamarin.Forms, this was mostly used for a underused feature of .xaml files without a code behind. On the non-XF platforms this method has re-entry protection, the XF version did not.
• #423 Fixes a null reference in the Setup.WPF sample.
• #417 Handle a ContentPropertyAttribute that doesn't supply a property name (WPF's Frame does this).
• #364 Support OnViewLoaded in Xamarin.Forms when the view is a ContentPage.
• #352 Add an extension point BindingScope.GetVisualParent to help people who use visual "bridge" libraries.
• #319 Add $clickedItem Special Value for WinRT / UWP based projects.
• #278 Add a navigation service for WPF and Silverlight with a sample. Note this service may change in 4.0.0 with an effort to align all the navigation services.
• #247 Add an extension point on PropertyChangedBase and BindableCollection<T> named OnUIThread to allow people to customize how property changed notifications are dispatched to the UI thread.

Caliburn.Micro 3.0.3

This is a very small release that reverts #339.

This release changed behavior so that views were resolved from the container in the same way as view models. The change in behavior caused problems for applications using containers that threw exceptions on failure to resolve a dependency.

This change should have been considered a breaking change and left to 4.0.0 and considered more seriously. For that I apologize.

It's also contains a typo in documentation fix. #402

Caliburn.Micro 3.0.2

This is a minor bug fix release.

• Fixed support for child view models at design time. #214, #358, #359, #379
• Caliburn.Micro.Xamarin.Forms nuget package now depends on Caliburn.Micro for applications helping to ensure you have all the right packages. #323
• Stopped extra calls to InitializeComponent in Xaamarin.Forms. #326
• Support .NET 4.0 in the Caliburn.Micro.Start nuget package. #348
• Ensure view model activation and deactivation is happening on back navigation in Xamarin.Forms. #342
• ContentView bindings correctly deal with message targets in Xamarin.Forms. #349
• Convention added for DocumentViewer in WPF. #368
• Added some generic overloads to methods on SimpleContainer. #390
• ViewLocator will now correctly call GetInstance for resolution of the view falling back to manual instantiation. #339 Update: This change was reverted in 3.0.3

The highest impact bug fix for this release is the last one, previously the ViewModelLocator would call GetInstance to try to resolve the view model (falling back to GetAllInstances and then manual instantiation), ViewLocator however previously only called GetAllInstances.

This release makes them consistent, however it could cause problems if you're throwing exceptions on no resolution of a service from the container. I'd recommend if you are doing this checking whether the type is assignable to UIElement (or some view type) and return null (or skip throwing the exception).

Caliburn.Micro 3.0.1

This is a minor bug fix release.

• Update the assembly version to match the nuget package version - #299
• BindingScope updated to deal with MenuFlyoutSubItem in UWP - #308

Caliburn.Micro 3.0.0

I'm really pleased to finally announce the release of Caliburn.Micro 3.0.0 after a long period of being in beta. The major features of 3.0.0 are Windows 10 / UWP and Xamarin.Forms support. With this release you can use your view models across all major platforms that support C#!

It's important to note this is a change in the major versions to there may be breaking changes.

Windows 10

The Windows 10 release follows along with the Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 releases and combines them into a single library which is great from a maitenance perspective. If we need to start adding features specific to Phone, Xbox or even HoloLens they'll be done using feature detection via Windows.Foundation.Metadata.ApiInformation.

It includes conventions for new controls such as SplitView.

Also included is a sample showing how to set up a SplitView style app with the Frame not being the root visual but inside the ShellView, this sample is available at Hello UWP.

We now use the new open sourced XAML Behaviours package.

Windows 8.1

• Fix for transparent tiles in App Manifest Helper

Windows 8.0

This release drops support for Windows 8.0 (different from Windows 8.1).

Xamarin Forms

This release brings support for Xamarin.Forms which in abstraction layer over the different UIs in iOS, Android and Windows Phone Silverlight (Windows 8 / 10 support coming later). What's really interesting is that it comes with it's own XAML syntax (not the same as Windows XAML but very similar), this means we can get a closer to standard Caliburn.Micro experience. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I got ported reasonable easy.

There are some limitations of the Xamarin.Forms flavour of of XAML, primarily there is no programmatic access to x:Name mean we cannot support named based conventions. We can still support attached properties such as cm:Message.Attach as well as convention based view / view model location.

<ListView ItemsSource="{Binding Features}" HasUnevenRows="True"
          cm:Message.Attach="[Event ItemSelected] = [ShowFeature($selectedItem)]">
    <ListView.ItemTemplate>
        <DataTemplate>
            <ViewCell>
                <ContentView cm:View.Model="{Binding}" HorizontalOptions="FillAndExpand" VerticalOptions="FillAndExpand"/>
            </ViewCell>
        </DataTemplate>
    </ListView.ItemTemplate>
</ListView>

Also included is the now standard navigation service and navigation helper methods

navigationService.For<ProductViewModel>()
    .WithParam(v => v.ProductId, 42)
    .Navigate();

A sample of this sort of app is can be found at Hello.Forms in the GitHub repository.

One of the more interesting features here is that Xamarin.Forms runs on top of the existing mobile platform (Xamarin.iOS, Xamarin.Android and Windows Phone Silverlight). This makes it the first version where two different platforms of Caliburn.Micro have to run side by side. We essentially have two instances of ViewModelLocator, one in Caliburn.Micro.ViewModelLocator for the current host platform and one at Caliburn.Micro.Xamarin.Forms.ViewModelLocator if Xamarin.Forms is present.

Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android

This release primarily targets Xamarin.Forms, however work has been done to allow your view models to be reused within a Xamarin.iOS or Xamarin.Android applications with no support around binding or conventions.

These features will be added in later feature releases.

A sample of this sort of app is can be found at Hello.Xamarin in the GitHub repository.

Preserving State

One new feature in this release is the CachingFrameAdapter. This subclass of FrameAdapter (which implements INavigationService in WinRT platforms such as Windows 8.1, Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 10) will cache internally view models and reuse them on the appropriate navigation. This allows scenarios where the built in NavigationCacheMode doesn't make sense but still preserve your view model state. A sample of this in action is available at Caliburn.Micro.State.

Other Changes

• Resolved a WPF bug using MainWindow when it's disposed.
• Resolved ViewLocator.LocateForModelType failing to deal with improperly reused views in WinRT.
• Resolved a premature garbage collection issue in Action.Invoke.
• Removed a unnecessary explicate collection in FrameAdapter.
• BindingScope has been cleaned up a lot so will be easier to extend.
• Async methods are now taken into account for conventions. CanLogin will be used as a guard for LoginAsync and will be attached to a control with xName="Login".
• Better handling of scenarios where a root frame is not being used with the navigation service.
• Removed the case sensitivity when adding custom special values to MessageBinder.
• Screen.IsActive, Screen.IsInitialised and PropertyChangedBase.IsNotifying are now virtual, we don't see then behaviour being overriden but a lot apps will need to add their own custom attributes to these properties.

Breaking Changes

• The extensions projects have moved into the main platform assembly, these were initially created as a place for very platform specific code but they've outlived there usefulness and removing them reduces some maintenance costs.
• Bind.Model had a feature enabling you to pass a string which used IoC to find the model. This was deprecated in 2.0.0 and has now been removed.
• SimpleContainer now only uses public constructors.
• The UriFor method has been deprecated in favour of just For given the lack of uri support on a number of platforms.
• WinRT platforms now make use of AssemblySourceCache which means if your view models do not implement INotifyPropertyChanged or views subclass from UIElement then they may not be found by ViewLocator or ViewModelLocator. This behaviour can be changed by modifying AssemblySourceCache.ExtractTypes.

Thanks

Thank you to all who have contributed fixes, reported issues and generally feedback on the extended pre-release versions.

As well a bit thanks to Marker Metro who sponsored a lot of the time it took me to put this 3.0.0 release together.

Caliburn.Micro 3.0.0-beta2

All the release notes from 3.0.0-alpha and 3.0.0-beta1 apply to this release as well.

Windows 10

• Added runtime directives to help with .NET Native compilation.
• Added a missing convention for SplitView

Windows 8.1

• Fix for transparent tiles in App Manifest Helper. Thanks @0x8DEADF00D

Other Changes

• Uses the new open source UWP Behaviors nuget package.
• Async methods are now taken into account for conventions. CanLogin will be used as a guard for LoginAsync and will be attached to a control with xName="Login". Thanks @BrunoJuchli
• Better handling of scenarios where a root frame is not being used with the navigation service.

Breaking Changes

All the breaking changes from 3.0.0-alpha and 3.0.0-beta1 apply to this release as well.

• DefaultPlatformProvider has been removed with PlatformProvider.Current now throwing an exception if not correctly initialized.

Caliburn.Micro 3.0.0-beta1

All the release notes from 3.0.0-alpha apply to this release as well.

Windows 10

The Windows 10 release follows along with the Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 releases and combines them into a single library which is great from a maitenance perspective. If we need to start adding features specific to Phone, Xbox or even HoloLens they'll be done using feature detection via Windows.Foundation.Metadata.ApiInformation.

Also included is a sample showing how to set up a SplitView style app with the Frame not being the root visual but inside the ShellView, this sample is available at Hello UWP.

Preserving state

One new feature in this release is the CachingFrameAdapter. This subclass of FrameAdapter (which implements INavigationService in WinRT platforms such as Windows 8.1, Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 10) will cache internally view models and reuse them on the appropriate navigation. This allows scenarios where the built in NavigationCacheMode doesn't make sense but still preserve your view model state. A sample of this in action is available at Caliburn.Micro.State.

Xamarin Forms

• Included NavigationHelper which adds the For<TViewModel> method to allow easier view model navigation.

navigationService.For<ProductViewModel>()
    .WithParam(v => v.ProductId, 42)
    .Navigate();

Other Changes

• Resolved a WPF bug using MainWindow when it's disposed. Thanks dvdorle.
• Resolved ViewLocator.LocateForModelType failing to deal with improperly reused views in WinRT.
• Resolved a premature garbage collection issue in Action.Invoke.
• Removed a unnecessary explicate collection in FrameAdapter.
• BindingScope has been cleaned up a lot so will be easier to extend.

Breaking Changes

All the breaking changes from 3.0.0-alpha apply to this release as well.

• The extensions projects have moved into the main platform assembly, these were initially created as a place for very platform specific code but they've outlived there usefulness and removing them reduces some maintenance costs.
• Bind.Model had a feature enabling you to pass a string which used IoC to find the model. This was deprecated in 2.0.0 and has now been removed.
• SimpleContainer now only uses public constructors. Thanks belyansky.
• The UriFor method has been deprecated in favour of just For given the lack of uri support on a number of platforms.
• WinRT platforms now make use of AssemblySourceCache which means if your view models do not implement INotifyPropertyChanged or views subclass from UIElement then they may not be found by ViewLocator or ViewModelLocator. This behaviour can be changed by modifying AssemblySourceCache.ExtractTypes.

Caliburn.Micro 3.0.0-alpha

What's New?

• Caliburn.Micro.Core now supports Xamarin platforms.
• Limited support for Caliburn.Micro features in Xamarin native projects.
• Major support for Xamarin.Forms.

More information can be found on the announcement

Known Issues

• The current Storyboard designer for iOS in Visual Studio doesn't respect the folde r/ namespace it's placed in when generating types, as such the current conventions for view model locator MyApp.ViewControllers.LoginViewController to MyApp.ViewModels.LoginViewModel may not make sense in the long term.
• There is no programmatic access to x:Name in Xamarin.Forms, therefore the feature of name based conventions will not be available, you will need to use normal {Binding Username} and cm:Message.Attach="SignIn".
• There is no way to check to see if a BindableProperty has a Binding set. Thankfully we only use this ensure name based conventions don't overwrite existing bindings, given the first issue this is currently less of a problem.
• I'm not entirly happy with FormsApplication and that both Caliburn.Micro and Xamarin.Forms want to set a custom UIApplicationDelegate, we'll need a better way of playing together nicely.

Breaking Changes

Right now there are no breaking API changes for the existing platforms there are some ABI ones, given the new multi-platform scenario with Xamarin Forms I've introduced a new assembly Caliburn.Micro.Platform.Core that holds some of the internal classes used the various platform assemblies. This lets us have to platforms at the same time without any type collision.

If you're using nuget then this new assembly will automatically be referenced, but if you're doing any sort of manual references you may need to check this out. I've applied this change to all the "modern" platforms (.NET 4.5, Windows Phone 8, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 Windows Phone 8.1, Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android). Due to the PCL profile restrictions the .NET 4.0 and Silverlight 5 platforms work as they previously did.

As the alpha progresses I expect there will be breaking changes on the Xamarin platforms, and I don't expect many if any changes on the others.

Thanks to all who contributed fixes, logged bugs etc.

Caliburn.Micro 2.0.2

What's New?

• Resolved some design time bugs.
• PropertyChangedBase.Refresh is now virtual.
• Added checks to guard against an async CanClose.
• Allow SettingsWindowManager to open independent flyouts [WinRT].
• Deal with unicode in C# identifiers.
• AttachedCollection.On* methods are now virtual.
• ViewAware.GetView is now virtual`.
• ViewLocator.LocateForModel falls back to LocateForModelType if the view could not be added to the visual tree.
• ActionMessage.UpdateAvailablility is now virtual.
• Removed explicit garbage collection from WinRT FrameAdapter.
• Resolved a bug where couldn't navigate to a view model that contained the name of the assembly.

Thanks to all who contributed fixes, logged bugs etc.

Caliburn.Micro 2.0.1

What's New?

• Resolved compilation errors in the Caliburn.Micro.Start package due to the breaking changes in 2.0.0.
• PropertyChangedBase supports DataContract serialization on appropriate platforms.
• Windows Phone 8.1 now exposes an INavigationService.BackPressed to better let apps handle and potentially cancel hardware back button events.
• Added a convention for Windows Phone 8.1 Pivot.
• Resolved a bug where OnViewReady argument was null.
• ActionMessage is more resilient to null values.
• Resolved BindingScope.FindNamedDescendants crashed on DependencyObjects
• Added View.IsInDesignMode.

Thanks to all who contributed fixes, logged bugs etc.