Loading XAML at runtime?

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As Jakob Christensen noted, you can load any XAML you want using XamlReader.Load. This doesn’t apply only for styles, but UIElements as well. You just load the XAML like:

UIElement rootElement;
FileStream s = new FileStream(fileName, FileMode.Open);
rootElement = (UIElement)XamlReader.Load(s);
s.Close();

Then you can set it as the contents of the suitable element, e.g. for

<Window x:Class="MainWindow"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
    Title="Foo Bar">
    <Grid x:Name="layoutGrid">
        <!-- any static elements you might have -->
    </Grid>
</Window>

you could add the rootElement in the grid with:

layoutGrid.Children.Add(rootElement);
layoutGrid.SetColumn(rootElement, COLUMN);
layoutGrid.SetRow(rootElement, ROW);

You’ll naturally also have to connect any events for elements inside the rootElement manually in the code-behind. As an example, assuming your rootElement contains a Canvas with a bunch of Paths, you can assign the Paths’ MouseLeftButtonDown event like this:

Canvas canvas = (Canvas)LogicalTreeHelper.FindLogicalNode(rootElement, "canvas1");
foreach (UIElement ui in LogicalTreeHelper.GetChildren(canvas)) {
    System.Windows.Shapes.Path path = ui as System.Windows.Shapes.Path;
    if (path != null) {
        path.MouseLeftButtonDown += this.LeftButtonDown;
    }
}

I’ve not tried switching XAML files on the fly, so I cannot say if that’ll really work or not.

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