How to use DataContext?

Question

What I am trying to do is simply have a combobox populate with data from an sqlite table. While I have done this with code methods, I wold really like to do this in what I can see is the better WPF way to do things.

From what I understand the flow should go something like this:

I should have a class that holds the data, I made a quick class which the default constructor is to connect to the database and dump it's results to a list like so:

internal class mainmenusql
{
    private List<string> _Jobs;

    public mainmenusql()
    {
        SQLiteConnection conn = new SQLiteConnection();
        conn.ConnectionString = "Data Source=C:\\Users\\user\\Documents\\db.sqlite;Version=3";

        try
        {
            conn.Open();
            SQLiteDataReader reader;
            SQLiteCommand command = new SQLiteCommand(conn);
            command.CommandType = CommandType.Text;
            command.CommandText = "SELECT * FROM Tasks";
            reader = command.ExecuteReader();

            if (reader.HasRows)
            {
                while (reader.Read())
                {
                    _Jobs.Add(reader.GetValue(0).ToString());
                }
            }
            else
            {
                MessageBox.Show("No records");
            }

        }
        catch (Exception err)
        {
            MessageBox.Show(err.Message);
        }
        finally
        {
            conn.Close();
        }
    }
}

Having some errors with the list "Object reference not set to an instance of an object".

But anyways, the next step should be to set the DataContext of the form to this object right?

    public MainWindow()
    {
        DataContext = new mainmenusql();
        InitializeComponent();
    }

And finally the combobox should have a binding right?

<Window x:Class="sqliteDatacontext.MainWindow"
        xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
        xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
        Title="MainWindow" Height="350" Width="525">
    <Grid>
        <ComboBox DataContext="{Binding Path=_Jobs}" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="141,124,0,0" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="120"/>
    </Grid>
</Window>

What am I doing wrong here?

Answer 1

For binding to something of a datacontext, it needs to be exposed via public getter / setter...

public class mainmenusql
{
    public List<string> _Jobs
    { get ; protected set; }   


    public mainmenusql()
    {
       _Jobs = new List<string>();

       // rest of populating your data
    }
}

The binding in your window control is the ItemsSource

<ComboBox ItemsSource="{Binding Path=_Jobs}" />

The "DataContext" is applied to the entire window... From that being the basis, any of your controls can have their element "bound" to almost anything "publicly" available ON your data context... in this case, a ComboBox list of choices comes from its "ItemSource" property... So you want the ITEMSOURCE pointing to your _Jobs.