Finding the dialog a silverlight FrameworkElement lives in?

Question

I have a silverlight app consisting of several dialogs each with a collection of FrameworkElements in it.

Is it possible to find the dialog in which a Framework element is in?

Answer 1

You can use the VisualTreeHelper. The code below is what I use to find the Page in a WPF application. You can replace Page with whatever container you need in Silverlight, maybe Popup.

var parent = VisualTreeHelper.GetParent(this);
    while (!(parent is Page))
    {
        parent = VisualTreeHelper.GetParent(parent);
    }

Answer 2

http://forums.silverlight.net/p/55369/142519.aspx has a method to simplify the above example code and make it generic-friendly:

public static class ControlFinder
{
    public static T FindParent<T>(this UIElement control) where T: UIElement
    {
        UIElement p = VisualTreeHelper.GetParent(control) as UIElement;
        if (p != null)
        {
            if (p is T)
                return p as T;
            else
                return ControlFinder.FindParent<T>(p);
        }
        return null;
    }
}

Use it like:

var page = myElement.FindParent<Page>();

Answer 3

Yes it is possible. If you know the structure of your control, then you can user FrameworkElement.GetParent() or else you can use Tree-traversal algorithms like BFS or DFS to find the your framework element.