ViewModels in ViewModelLocator MVVM Light

Solution 1:

First, lets look at what ViewModelLocator does and why we use it:

ViewModelLocator is declared as an object on our App.xaml page and is an application singleton. We're going to have one, and only one of them available to the application when it runs.

ViewModelLocator is the source for all our ViewModels in MVVM Light. For each ViewModel we'll have a property on the ViewModelLocator that allows us to get a ViewModel for a View. This code looks like this:

public class ViewModelLocator
{
    public MainPageViewModel MainPage
    {
        get { return new MainPageViewModel(); }
    }
}

This is a piece of my App.xaml:

<Application.Resources>
    <vm:ViewModelLocator
        x:Key="ViewModelLocator" />
</Application.Resources>

This is a piece from View.xaml

DataContext="{Binding MainPage, Source={StaticResource ViewModelLocator}}"

So far so good. To answer your first question, do you have to use Ioc in MVVM Light? No. There's no need as your viewmodel will be given to your view fully built and instantiated by the ViewModelLocator.

Now, onto your second question: What's the purpose of IoC?

IoC is designed to allow you to do the following:

With Mvvm Light you do the above like this:

public class ViewModelLocator
{
    public ViewModelLocator()
    {
        ServiceLocator.SetLocatorProvider(() => SimpleIoc.Default);

        if (ViewModelBase.IsInDesignModeStatic)
        {
            SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IDataService, Design.DesignDataService>();
        }
        else
        {
            SimpleIoc.Default.Register<IDataService, DataService>();         
        }

        SimpleIoc.Default.Register<MainViewModel>();
    }

    public MainViewModel Main
    {
        get { return SimpleIoc.Default.GetInstance<MainViewModel>(); }
    }
}

public class MainViewModel
{
    public ObservableCollection<Foo> Foos { get; set; }

    public MainViewModel(IDataService dataService)
    {
        _dataService=dataService;
        Foos=_dataService.GetFoos();
    }
}

When I resolve my MainViewModel when I call

SimpleIoc.Default.GetInstance<MainViewModel>()

what happens internally is that the SimpleIoc checks to see if the MainViewModel has any dependencies (parameters in its constructor). It then tries to resolve these parameters by looking at the interfaces that have been registered with it. It does this recursively, so if DataService had a dependency it would be instantiated and passed to the DataService constructor when it was being instantiated as well.

Why would I do all this work?

1. Make your classes easily unit testable
2. Make your code interface-driven. This means that you're referencing interfaces rather than concrete classes
3. Make your code loosely coupled. This means that someone can change the implementation of an interface and classes that consume that interface don't care and don't have to be re-coded.
4. Resolve your classes dependencies in an automated way.
5. In MVVM Light, you'll see that it can tell when it's running in design-mode (ViewModelBase.IsInDesignModeStatic), this means that you can create design-time services to provide your viewmodels data so your View in Visual Studio contains actual data.

Solution 2:

MVVM Light has a lot of nice features but it appears to me that the Service Locator creates unwanted dependency of the views on the view models. Ideally, I would like to have the ViewModelLocator in Library A, the view models in Library B and the views in Library C. Then I can mix and match these as needed for future projects. However, in the design of MVVM Light, as far as I can see, the views (Library C) will always have a dependency on the ViewModelLocator (this is okay) but because the ViewModelLocator (Library A) will always have a dependency on the view models (Library B), then the views will always depend on the view models (this is not okay because a view now must include all the view model libraries it was ever used with across all products).

I believe that Prism gets around this problem by using string keys somehow. Am I missing something?

Oops! I think I just answered my own question. The solution is to make Library A, the ServiceLocator, specific to a particular solution (product). It then contains a reference to the view models only for that solution. Then the views depend on this ServiceLocator which in turn depends on all the view models for that product. The final result is that the views depend only on the views models that it will be used with for that product. There is no problem with thee fact that we are duplicating the ServiceLocator for each solution because this module contains only code that is specific to the solution. The components of the ServiceLocator such as the SimpleIoc class are, of course, common to all solutions, but these have been factored out into reusable classes that we invoke in ServiceLocator.

To summarize things, the problem I am trying to solve is suppose that a solution has 6 view models, four of which are closely related and two of which are closely related. We therefore create two assemblies, each containing the closely related view models. Suppose we design a product that uses one set of view models and the solution is designed to run Windows 8. Now the views are all different and we want to re-use only one set (assembly) of view models. So we just create a new ServiceLocator assembly that points to this assembly of view models and also any others that we need. Our new Windows 8 views now depend on this new ServiceLocator assembly and only the view models that are used in our new product (solution).