Have you ever used some control in Xamarin.Forms that appears to have an event instead of a command? You are working the MVVM love and then you come across that annoying control. Almost all the Xamarin.Forms controls have both events and commands, enabling choice, but you do get those non-conforming ones…

I was lurking on the Xamarin forums and I came across a question regarding the event-only design of the SkiaSharp SKCanvasView. The SKCanvasView has a PaintSurface event that allows you to draw on the view with SkiaSharp commands.

There is nothing wrong with the event as it stands, but things get messy when all the data is in a view model. In simple cases, this is easy to resolve. Take a small example where there is only one view model, which is the binding context for an entire Page:

public partial class MainPage : ContentPage
{
    public MainPage()
    {
        InitializeComponent();

        BindingContext = new MainViewModel();
    }
}

And the view model looks like this:

public class MainViewModel
{
    public MainViewModel()
    {
        PaintCommand = new Command<SKPaintSurfaceEventArgs>(OnPainting);
    }

    public ICommand PaintCommand { get; private set; }

    private void OnPainting(SKPaintSurfaceEventArgs e)
    {
        // ... draw ...
    }
}

Where, or rather how, does one get an event somewhere on the page to the view model? Well, one way would be to attach a handler to the view and then pass the event arguments to the view model:

canvasView.PaintSurface += (sender, e) =>
{
    // we can do this because of our simple example
    var viewModel = (MainViewModel)BindingContext;

    // fire the command
    if (viewModel.PaintCommand.CanExecute(e))
    {
        viewModel.PaintCommand.Execute(e);
    }
};

This will work as everything is pretty much straight-forward. However, what happens if the canvas is in a ListView or if there are several canvases on the page? We would end up with a messy code-behind and probably a few memory leaks.

A much better way to solve this problem would be to use Xamarin.Forms’ behaviors:

Behaviors lets you add functionality to user interface controls without having to subclass them. Behaviors are written in code and added to controls in XAML or code.

Behaviors are easy to create and easy to use. The first thing we need to do is create our specific behavior:

public class PaintSurfaceCommandBehavior : Behavior<SKCanvasView>
{
    // we need a bindable property for the command
    public static readonly BindableProperty CommandProperty =
        BindableProperty.Create(
            nameof(Command),
            typeof(ICommand),
            typeof(PaintSurfaceCommandBehavior),
            null);

    // the command property
    public ICommand Command
    {
        get { return (ICommand)GetValue(CommandProperty); }
        set { SetValue(CommandProperty, value); }
    }

    // invoked immediately after the behavior is attached to a control
    protected override void OnAttachedTo(SKCanvasView bindable)
    {
        base.OnAttachedTo(bindable);

        // we want to be notified when the view's context changes
        bindable.BindingContextChanged += OnBindingContextChanged;
        // we are interested in the paint event
        bindable.PaintSurface += OnPaintSurface;
    }

    // invoked when the behavior is removed from the control
    protected override void OnDetachingFrom(SKCanvasView bindable)
    {
        base.OnDetachingFrom(bindable);

        // unsubscribe from all events
        bindable.BindingContextChanged -= OnBindingContextChanged;
        bindable.PaintSurface -= OnPaintSurface;
    }

    // the view's context changed
    private void OnBindingContextChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        // update the behavior's context to match the view
        BindingContext = ((BindableObject)sender).BindingContext;
    }

    // the canvas needs to be painted
    private void OnPaintSurface(object sender, SKPaintSurfaceEventArgs e)
    {
        // first check if the command can/should be fired
        if (Command?.CanExecute(e) == true)
        {
            // fire the command
            Command.Execute(e);
        }
    }
}

Now that we have the behavior, we can simply add it to the canvas view:

<views:SKCanvasView>
    <views:SKCanvasView.Behaviors>
        <local:PaintSurfaceCommandBehavior Command="{Binding PaintCommand}" />
    </views:SKCanvasView.Behaviors>
</views:SKCanvasView>

That’s it! Our canvas is now command-based and can be drawn on from the view model.

This is just a very limited behavior, for one specific event for one specific view. But, behaviors are very powerful and can be used to do many more things. One such use is to make a more generic behavior that can map any event to any command:

• Xamarin Docs – Reusable EventToCommandBehavior
• Xamarin Blog – Turn Events into Commands with Behaviors
• Anthony Simmon – EventToCommand in Xamarin Forms Apps

Besides those examples, be sure to read more about behaviors, and what they can do, in the Xamarin documentation.