How to Reuse Custom Controls, Resource Dictionaries Across Applications?

Question

I have defined a set of Custom Controls, Styles, Resource Dictionaries, etc.. that will be used as a basis for all applications my team develops. I have tried the route of copying everything between projects and this just causes namespace related find/replace issues. I have read that the best way to handle this is to create a library that is referenced from each project however, from what I've read embedding and using resource dictionaries from within referenced library's can be a bit quirky. What is the recommended method of handling this? Are there any good tutorials out there? I have scoured the vast internet's for a solution but haven't found anything satisfying... maybe I and using the wrong search terms?? Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

You can definitely use an external library and pull in ResourceDictionaries, images, etc from it. There are a lot of different options for path syntax in XAML but probably the most stable for this type of situation is the form /<assemblyName>;component/<folder>/<fileName>

If you have a project named MyCompany.SharedResources and you want to use a TextStyles.xaml dictionary in the Styles folder merging that into another project would look like:

<ResourceDictionary>
  <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
    <ResourceDictionary Source="/MyCompany.SharedResources;component/Styles/TextStyles.xaml" />
  </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
</ResourceDictionary>