Bind to a method in WPF?

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Another approach that might work for you is to create a custom IValueConverter that takes a method name as a parameter, so that it would be used like this:

ItemsSource="{Binding 
    Converter={StaticResource MethodToValueConverter},
    ConverterParameter="GetChildren"}"

This converter would find and invoke the method using reflection. This requires the method to not have any arguments.

Here’s an example of such a converter’s source:

public sealed class MethodToValueConverter : IValueConverter
{
    public object Convert(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, CultureInfo culture)
    {
        var methodName = parameter as string;
        if (value==null || methodName==null)
            return value;
        var methodInfo = value.GetType().GetMethod(methodName, new Type[0]);
        if (methodInfo==null)
            return value;
        return methodInfo.Invoke(value, new object[0]);
    }

    public object ConvertBack(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, CultureInfo culture)
    {
        throw new NotSupportedException("MethodToValueConverter can only be used for one way conversion.");
    }
}

And a corresponding unit test:

[Test]
public void Convert()
{
    var converter = new MethodToValueConverter();
    Assert.AreEqual("1234", converter.Convert(1234, typeof(string), "ToString", null));
    Assert.AreEqual("ABCD", converter.Convert(" ABCD ", typeof(string), "Trim", null));

    Assert.IsNull(converter.Convert(null, typeof(string), "ToString", null));

    Assert.AreEqual("Pineapple", converter.Convert("Pineapple", typeof(string), "InvalidMethodName", null));
}

Note that this converter does not enforce the targetType parameter.

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