ResourceDictionary in a separate assembly

I have resource dictionary files (MenuTemplate.xaml, ButtonTemplate.xaml, etc) that I want to use in multiple separate applications. I could add them to the applications' assemblies, but it's better if I compile these resources in one single assembly and have my applications reference it, right?

After the resource assembly is built, how can I reference it in the App.xaml of my applications? Currently I use ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries to merge the individual dictionary files. If I have them in an assembly, how can I reference them in xaml?

Solution 1:

Check out the pack URI syntax. You want something like this:

<ResourceDictionary Source="pack://application:,,,/YourAssembly;component/Subfolder/YourResourceFile.xaml"/>

Solution 2:

An example, just to make this a 15 seconds answer -

Say you have "styles.xaml" in a WPF library named "common" and you want to use it from your main application project:

1. Add a reference from the main project to "common" project
2. Your app.xaml should contain:

<Application.Resources>
    <ResourceDictionary>
        <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
            <ResourceDictionary Source="pack://application:,,,/Common;component/styles.xaml"/>
        </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
    </ResourceDictionary>
</Application.Resources>