help on pivot control

Question

Hi,
I'm new to the usage of Pivot control and looking for some quick help on the following:
1. I have a Pivot page with multiple Pivot Items, what should be the event which I must handle to do some processing (like loading a list box in a Pivot Item with data) during the loading of a 'Pivot Item'. I was using the Loaded event  (PhoneApplicationPage_Loaded) for a normal Silverlight form application. What should be the equivalent for Pivot based form?
2. How can I retrieve the 'Header' text of the newly selected 'Pivot Item', when the user selects a new 'Pivot Item'
3. How can I dynamically select a 'Pivot Item'? I mean emulating the effect of user selecting a Pivot Item through code.
4. How can I dynamically change the 'Header' text of a Pivot Item (Not statically by modifying XAML like this <controls:PivotItem> <controls:PivotItem.Header> <TextBlock Text="hello" Foreground="#FF79A545"/> </controls:PivotItem.Header>)
5. How can I dynamically change the background image of a Pivot page?

Appreciate any help.

Also looking for pointers to some good reading materials on the usage of Pivot controls and sample Pivot control based Projects.

Thanks

Answer 1

Hi Shibu,

1. I have a Pivot page with multiple Pivot Items, what should be the event which I must handle to do some processing (like loading a list box in a Pivot Item with data) during the loading of a 'Pivot Item'. I was using the Loaded event  (PhoneApplicationPage_Loaded) for a normal Silverlight form application. What should be the equivalent for Pivot based form?

Pivot and PivotItem controls both have a Loaded event available.

2. How can I retrieve the 'Header' text of the newly selected 'Pivot Item', when the user selects a new 'Pivot Item'

You can do this (assuming you named your pivot "MyPivot"):
    string selectedHeader = (MyPivot.SelectedItem as PivotItem).Header as string;
If you had defined your header as a TextBlock like in #4, cast it to a TextBlock instead of a string and access its Text property.
    TextBlock selectedHeader = (MyPivot.SelectedItem as PivotItem).Header as TextBlock;
    string selectedText = selectedHeader.Text;

3. How can I dynamically select a 'Pivot Item'? I mean emulating the effect of user selecting a Pivot Item through code.

Set the Pivot.SelectedIndex or Pivot.SelectedItem property (depending on whether you want to refer to an integer index or the PivotItem itself).

4. How can I dynamically change the 'Header' text of a Pivot Item (Not statically by modifying XAML like this <controls:PivotItem> <controls:PivotItem.Header> <TextBlock Text="hello" Foreground="#FF79A545"/> </controls:PivotItem.Header>)

Easiest thing to do here is give the TextBlock a name, like <TextBlock x:Name="MyHeader" Text="hello" Foreground="#FF79A545"/> , then you can directly access MyHeader.Text, MyHeader.Foreground, etc like any other TextBlock. Or you can access the Header through the PivotItem like I described in #2.

5. How can I dynamically change the background image of a Pivot page?

The Background property is a Brush. For an image, assign it an ImageBrush:
    ImageBrush img = new ImageBrush();
    BitmapImage bitmap = new BitmapImage(new Uri("/Background.png", UriKind.Relative));
    img.ImageSource = bitmap;
    MyPivot.Background = img;

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Richard

Answer 2

Thanks Richard for the quick response. Awesome!